Chuck & Sarah Vs The Bunker
by ninjaVanish
Summary: Season 3 AU. Sarah wakes up in a hospital. Chuck is missing, but Sarah has bigger problems. Rated for language, and suggestive themes. Charah heavy. Now complete.
1. Chapter 1: Escape

Sarah vs The Bunker

A/N -- I realize I'm starting in an odd place. I'll probably flash back from here to fill in some of the huge blanks. No Beta as of yet.

CHAPTER I - Escape

Sarah woke up in a hospital bed, still muddled from whatever it was they'd injected her with. She glanced down, reaching to pat her belly. But her hand was strapped to the bed, and she saw in horror, her belly was flat again, or flattish anyway. Lisa was gone. Her mind went straight to the worst possible scenario. She'd had a miscarriage. Oh god... where was Chuck, why wasn't he here with her for this, what was— Memory rushed back and her eyes shut in rage and horror. No miscarriage, but nearly as bad. The NSA had found them.

She supposed she should be happy they had let her deliver naturally, instead of forcing a C-section on her, ripping her child out of her in the sake of expedience. Especially given the complications she'd suffered to her pregnancy those last few months. Sarah glanced around the room. Other than the leather restraints, her room could have been in any hospital in the country. Her memories were still a little muddy from the sedatives, and her epidural certainly hadn't helped, but it hadn't been a very long drive in the back of the NSA van that had come for her, so. Probably this was Cottonwood Medical Center, where she'd planned to deliver in the first place, plus some NSA goons Beckman could trust to follow orders and not ask questions.

Sarah's return to consciousness had spurred her nurse to inform the black suited NSA agent. He entered, hands at his side. "Agent Walker." He said simply. "We need to know what happened before we can determine your status."

Sarah grunted. "It'll have to wait. Go get the nurse, or you can hold the bedpan while I poop."

The NSA agent took off his sunglasses and fixed her with a glare reminiscent of Casey, but she shrugged and waggled her arms in her restraints. "It's not like I'm going anywhere." The NSA agent looked at her, scrutinizing her eyes for any hint of duplicity. As soon as the door shut behind him, Sarah scooted down the bed to get at her wrist restraints with her teeth. She winced in pain at the movement, her flesh bruised and tender from labor, but not torn, she hoped. That would just complicate matters even more. It took some doing, but she had just managed to free one of her wrists, when she heard the door. Sarah tugged the strap back together, hiding her hand in the folds of her blanket. The NSA agent stayed in the hall, shutting the door behind the nurse.

"The guard said you need the bedpan.?" Sarah nodded. "Okay, just scooch your butt up a little and..." Sarah's hand darted free of the restraints on the side furthest from the door, snatching the Nurse onto the bed by the hair and then snaking around the woman's neck. It wasn't a perfect choke because she only had one hand free.

"Don't say a goddamn word." She hissed. "I won't hurt you. I just want to take my daughter and go."

"Please, I didn't do anything."

"That's why you get to live." She said. "Undo my other hand."  
The nurse hesitated, obviously going into shock.

"Undo my other hand. I can't put you in a sleeper hold one handed, but I can break your neck one handed, and I really don't want to do that."

Her hands shaking, the nurse undid Sarah's other hand. Sarah's newly freed hand came up, locking in across the nurse's jugular on the other side. She held it for a count of six, just enough that the interruption of blood flow would render her unconscious and cause her short term memory to go on vacation. The nurse wouldn't remember a thing.

But just to be safe, she gagged the Nurse and tied her hands behind her back with a strip torn from her bed sheet.

With the Nurse's scrubs and ID, she just had to neutralize the NSA team, but she had no idea how many men there were. At least four. Beckman would have to be insane to have left only two, or maybe not.

God where was all that blood coming from. Her left hand was covered in... Sarah took hold of herself, tore another strip off the sheet and wrapped her arm, staunching the flow for a moment while she figured it out. IV must have come loose in the struggle with the nurse.

Then there was a knock on the door. "How long does it take to crap anyway." The NSA man said through the door. "In fifteen seconds I'm coming in." Sarah rolled her eyes and grabbed the bedpan before ducking to the side of the door. Right at her count of fifteen the door started to open. Sarah grabbed the wrist holding the doorknob and hauled the agent into the room.

She was a little clumsy on her feet, and she missed the nerve cluster her first punch was aiming for. The NSA grunt's head snapped back and he tried to shove her, reaching for his gun. Sarah backhanded him across the face, the bedpan ringing its song of metal against bone. He went down, and Sarah briskly searched his pockets. His weapon was a standard 9mm, suppressed, she was thankful to see, but hopefully she wouldn't have to shoot anyone in a hospital.

"Hey, Neil? You see-- oh shit!" The man barked, still with his hand on the door, eyes as wide as they would go. Sarah had the first man's gun in her hand, giving her the drop on the second agent.

"Freeze." She growled. "Make one fucking move and I'll shoot."

"Bullshit." He reached for his gun, and Sarah squeezed off two quick rounds. Her aim wasn't great, but the range was point blank. Now that she was up and moving, she was exhausted and she hurt everywhere. The pain meds must have been wearing off. The first bullet took the agent in the meat of his calf, but the second obviously shattered him fibia. He screamed, a high pitched wail that sounded like Chuck when he was scared. Sarah shoved the extraneous thought out of her head and kicked away the gun the agent had only half managed to draw. With a deft spin, she clocked him in the head with the pistol butt, and his wailing cut off. Hopefully it wouldn't draw the other two men of the team, or more if Beckman had been particularly paranoid.

She risked poking her head out into the hall, glanced both ways, but still couldn't make out the NSA team. Usually the bad suits set them apart, but if there were another pair of agents on watch they were better disguised than Sarah was ready for.

Ducking back into her hospital room, Sarah dragged the two unconscious men around to the side of the bed away from the door and tore the bedsheets up completely to tie the NSA agents relatively securely. She knuckled her back, and stifled a groan, shook her head and pulled herself back to her feet. Then she took a look at the man she had shot, straightened the break in his leg from her second shot and tied the leftovers of the sheet around his leg. Better than nothing, but the man wouldn't be running marathons anytime soon.

Sarah tucked the first agent's gun into the waistband of her scrubs, and bounced the second on her palm for a moment. Finally she figured better safe than sorry, and she ejected the clip. It was a 9mm, same model beretta as the first gun. It always helped to have a spare. She worked the action of the second pistol once, but her reflexes were still a little watery from the meds, and she missed catching it out of the air. When she bent to retrieve it, her head spun and she staggered into the side of the bed, startling the nurse awake.

Sarah waved the empty gun in the nurse's face and the woman's eyes rolled up and she fainted dead away. It was a relief in a lot of ways. Sarah stuffed the empty gun under the mattress and thumbed the extra round into her spare clip. She stuck the spare clip into the waistband at the side and started for the door. She took her chart, so she could look official, and walked out of her room as if she had every right to. The nurse's shoes were a bit too small, and her feet hurt as she walked out -- but then why should they be any different from the rest of her--other than that, the operation was going well.

No one bothered her when she took a pack of butterfly bandages and gauze from a supply cart. Thankfully the elevator was empty, and she took the time to apply the butterflies to the tear she'd put in her arm and re-wrap the wound tight with gauze. The bedsheet would have eventually drawn attention. She just finished taping the new bandage in place, when the doors opened to the maternity ward. Sarah had been to the hospital here in Cottonwood so often over the past eight months, that finding maternity was child's play. She grinned a little at that, it sounded like something Chuck would say.

Sarah scoped the lobby for NSA agents and wasn't disappointed. There were three that she made almost immediately, with the fourth in a better cut of suit talking to what looked like the head nurse. Sarah made her way over to them, a plan forming in her mind. Not a great plan, but it should work if the NSA team didn't notice her right away.

The head nurse glanced at her as she approached, but didn't seem to notice she didn't work at the hospital immediately.

Sarah was all of two steps away when the woman did a double take, but by then, Sarah was reaching for her beretta. "Don't move, don't say a word, NSA."

"Who the hell are you?" The head nurse asked. The NSA agent moved, tried to spin and take the gun out of line. Sarah pulled back just enough and put a round in the back of his knee. The agent screamed and fell oddly, kind of pirohuetting downward along the axis of his original motion, blood pooling under him.

"Depends who you ask." Sarah said, putting her foot on the agent's hand that was still going for his gun. Then there were screaming nurses everywhere and shouting and confusion, and the other three NSA goons were running over, guns out. Sarah knelt down, put her knee in the NSA agent's throat.

"Drop the gun, Walker!"

Sarah glared at them and put the tip of the beretta's suppressor right in the downed agent's eye. "I'll do it. Drop the guns, kick them over to me."

"You kill him, then what? We kill you."

"Yeah right. You're going to open up on me in the maternity ward?" Sarah said. "Even one of your bullets over-penetrates, there's fifty newborns through that glass behind me. Only thing behind you is an elevator shaft. You're not going to shoot, so just kick the guns over here and get it over with."

The agents glanced at each other for a brief moment, weighing the odds. And then they did as she asked. Sarah grabbed a second gun to train on the three men with their hands up. "You, head nurse." Sarah barked. "Go in there and get my daughter."

"What... what's her name?"  
"Lisa." She said.

"What last name?"

Sarah glared at the NSA team, and pressed the hot tip of the suppressor harder into her captive. "What name'd you put her under, NSA?"

"I'm not telling you shit, Walker."

"It's Bartowski." Sarah said, finger a hairsbreadth from putting a bullet through the idiot's head. She shifted aim, and shot him in the hand instead. He screamed in pain. "What name!"

"Florence. Florence Beckman."

She grated her teeth a little at that revelation. "You heard the man. Go get me my daughter."

Sarah put more pressure on the captive NSA agent's throat to keep him down while she leaned over and scooped up the other guns. It was awkward, and Sarah risked the two steps to dump them in a nearby trash can, taking the bag out and slinging it over her shoulder. Then she motioned the NSA team to move with her two guns and stood.

"Into the supply closet."

Once she had them inside, Sarah broke the doorknob off with the butt of her pistol and dragged a nearby bench over across the door. Should hold them for a while at least. The head nurse waved and Sarah walked back over to take Lisa. She tucked one of her guns in the small of her back, and she felt a swell of pride as she saw her daughter for the first time. It lasted all of two seconds, before she heard the telltale snick of a safety being undone, of a round being chambered. And she had her daughter in her arms. She barely knew how to hold a baby properly, lessons with Chuck notwithstanding.

But her CIA instincts kicked in before her maternal instincts could tell her how stupid, how reckless it was. Sarah shoulder blocked the head nurse out of the line of fire, cradling Lisa in her right arm, head supported properly with her hand. She spun into a seated firing position, left arm extending as she fell. The bark of the pistol going off shattered the tense air of the maternity ward. The bullet stitched a line of red across her upper arm, a graze but still bleeding badly. Her aim would be hindered, if she had to do much shooting, but she had already squeezed off her first shot. Sarah's bullet took the NSA agent in the meat of his arm, and there was a crackling sound that accompanied the impact. He dropped the gun and collapsed in pain.

Blood trickling down her arm again, Sarah checked Lisa first thing. She was crying, but unhurt. Sarah imagined crying in this situation was a healthy baby sign, if the chorus of cries from the nursery room was any indication. Sarah awkwardly got back to her feet and stalked over to the NSA agent.

"What the fuck is wrong with you!" She screamed at him, foot pinning the man's wounded arm to the linoleum. "You shot at me while I had my baby!" The gun quivered as blood dripped down her wrist. She quivered with rage, fighting not to end this asshole's miserable life. A brief mental image of Chuck frowning in worry, in disappointment, and she squeezed the trigger twice, putting a bullet into the linoleum three inches to either side of the maimed agent's head. "Tell Beckman, the next team she sends better bring bodybags. I'm through playing nice." And then she kicked him in the face.

Sarah scooped up the bag of guns and trash and took off with Lisa curled up in the crook of her arm. Hospital security was running in the direction of the firefight when she slipped into the stairwell. Cooing softly at Lisa, Sarah managed to get the crying down to low sobs. It made sneaking a challenge, but She was going to do this. She went up one floor, instead of down, to the Surgical floor, grabbed another roll of gauze off a supply cart. Then she put her pistol into the back of the first doctor she found alone. "Give me your access card."

"I can't do that."

Sarah rolled her eyes and clouted him in the back of the neck with her pistol. She didn't have time for misguided heroics. With the access card, Sarah opened the secure express elevator, heading down to the ER.

During the elevator ride, Sarah continued making soothing noises and rocking Lisa gently. It seemed to work just like Chuck and the doctors had said it would. Sarah grinned at the little bundle in her arms. It was so amazing, this thing they'd made together. She knew if she lost Lisa none of it would matter. Sarah shuddered, remembering the feeling that had coursed through her when she heard the click of a gun being readied behind her. She shouldn't have turned, gone for it like that. Captivity and knowing Lisa was alive was better than the risk she'd run. What if the man had been a better shot, had been faster. Had put a bullet through her chest, or worse, through her daughter, instead of just the grazed arm. And that wasn't bad enough? The bullet had passed through space not six inches from her daughter's head. That could never happen again. Her arm stung, but it was small price to pay for her daughter's safety. Which reminded her. She shifted Lisa to her left arm despite the pain and wiped away as much of the blood as she could with her free arm. Sarah wrapped gauze tightly around her second wound, taking longer to be sure she didn't jostle the baby, who appeared somehow to have gone back to sleep. Sarah winced and smiled at the same time. The doors opened and Sarah stowed her gun in the trashbag with all the others. She walked briskly for the exit. Luckily she spotted the lone security guard on her exit before the elderly black man noticed her.

Ducking behind a pillar, she managed to get behind him. "Stay calm. That's a gun pressed against your kidney. This is a hospital, you probably wouldn't bleed to death if I shot you, but I'm sure you're not willing to take the chance for fifteen dollars an hour."

"Thirteen fifty."

Sarah paused for a moment. "Take out your gun with two fingers. Good. Hold it up to your left side. Sarah risked taking the gun away from the man's back, snatched his revolver, and stashed it in the bag with all the others before putting the suppressed beretta back into the guard's kidney.

"Count backwards from fifty." She grated. At forty six, she knocked him out with the butt of the gun and slipped out into the parking lot.

Her head was still swimming a little bit, but it wasn't any worse than it had been when she woke up. She didn't think so anyway. Sarah scanned the parking lot. The NSA team would be freeing itself soon, she had to get as far away as possible before she collapsed. And she was going to collapse. Adrenaline had brought her this far, but she knew it was only a matter of time at this point. Carrying Lisa like she was just made it harder. She needed a car, or a taxi or something. But she didn't have any money, and she'd have to call one. Sarah glanced around, looking for something. Her eyes fell on the nurse's id, still slung around her neck.

It was an odd thing, a kind of plastic box, not an ID sleeve. Sarah slipped the beretta back into the waistband of her scrubs and hitched the bag of guns up more securely, tied it loosely around her arm. As she walked briskly down the street, she rifled through the ID and other things inside one handed. She found a credit card, and scanned the street again. Half a block away, a small bus built like an airport shuttle was pulling in. Sarah walked faster, refusing to jog and risk waking up Lisa. She just managed to slip through the doors as they were closing.

"Where does this bus go?" She asked.

"Wal-mart, then the methodist church, then the assisted living center." The driver said. Sarah scanned the seats. About half were filled, with silver haired men and women in shorts and floppy brimmed hats and the other assorted 'old people' clothes that half the town seemed to be issued when they moved in. So much for inconspicuous.

Sarah sat down, despite her misgivings, and waited for someone to yell at her for not being old enough, or religious enough, to ride this bus. The drive to Wal-mart took only a few minutes, but Sarah had to endure a dozen questions from little old ladies, about her baby, about the bandages, the blood she hadn't quite managed to wash off. She hoped her story had been good enough, even as they pulled up out front, she couldn't remember what she had told them.

Sarah power-walked into the Wal-mart. Thankfully only one old lady got out for shopping, and Sarah ducked into the ladies room, using the stall to avoid talking to her. She breathed an immense sigh of relief and clutched Lisa in both arms and wept briefly, rocking back and forth and quietly, finally, freaking out.


	2. Chapter 2: Out of Touch

A/N: Chuck is eventually going to show up. Probably next chapter in fact. I promise, I just got carried away with Sarah on the run with baby in tow. Still no beta other than myself.

Standard Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, but you knew that.

Chapter Two: Out of Touch

0845 MST

That wasn't the end of it, of course. Once Sarah had cried herself out, she pulled the chain out of her scrub top, and held her engagement ring and her wedding ring in her fist for a moment to center herself. She had Lisa, probably the most tangible connection she would ever have to Chuck if she couldn't figure out a way to bust him out of a secure protection bunker. He probably wasn't even in the thing yet, but she stood no chance of intercepting his transport to the bunker and as much as it pained her, she had to keep one step ahead of the NSA instead of charging off after her missing husband like Rambo. Realistically, she knew it would be a long time before she saw him again. Months at least. But she'd done her weeping, now was time for action. She kissed the rings and tucked them away, and lifted up Lisa so she could plant a kiss on her daughter's forehead as well.

The old woman was probably long gone, so Sarah took the opportunity to inventory her possessions, meager as they were. Three silenced Beretta M92 pistols, with four clips, three full and one with nine rounds, two silenced Glock 17s,with full clips. One .22 LR caliber holdout pistol she wasn't familiar with, one Smith & Wesson .357 revolver. Credit cards under the name Moira Taggart. Identification for Moira Taggart, nurse, thirty two, blond, which was useful, 5'5" which was less useful. There was a bit of a resemblance, enough probably to pass muster with a Wal-mart checker. She could use the cards once with relative safely if she did it right away.

Scooping everything back into the woman's ID card holder, Sarah wiped her eyes and made sure Lisa was still tucked securely in her grasp. She restowed the guns in her trashbag and dumped the hospital's trash in the Wal-Mart bathroom trashcan. She grabbed a cart, put the guns bag in the main section and Lisa carefully in the baby carrier seat in the front, and asked the first sales associate she came across where to find baby stuff. The woman grinned at her and pointed the way.

Sarah managed a polite smile, but there was no warmth to it. It seemed like she could only manage that for anyone but Chuck and Lisa. The thought brought a thin smile, at least, and she started dumping things into the cart. First a baby carrier, then another, just to be safe. A pack of diapers. She got a sales associate to help her load a boxed car seat and then she stocked up on baby clothes and a handful of baby blankets. She saw the cutest pair of booties and couldn't help herself, even though Lisa wouldn't be walking anywhere.

Next stop was in cosmetics, for some heavy concealer and a handful of different colors of hair dye. They didn't have the other elements of a good disguise kit that she was missing, but it would take them longer than she needed to run facial recognition, so changing up the hair was probably plenty as long as she didn't run straight into an NSA team.

Sarah made her way over to sporting goods, grabbed a couple boxes of 9mm shells, a pair of folding knives and was pleased to find they actually had her brand of throwing knives.

She also dropped by the market section of the store, tossing in foods she wouldn't have to cook. MREs would have been perfect, but fig newtons and pringles would suffice for now. Sarah paused at the pharmacy, gazing longingly at all the painkillers and otc stimulants that could make a fair number of her problems go away, but she didn't know if she'd metabolize them into her breast milk, and that was going to be the only sure supply of food for her daughter for at least a few days. Halfway to checkout she had to turn around and go back for a first aid kit. She couldn't risk stealing medical supplies along the way, and she needed to be able to change her dressings regularly.

The clerk gave her a funny look when she was being rung up, bullets and baby clothes in the same shopping cart would do that. Ditching Nurse Moria's id would be priority one in a few minutes. The woman was probably still being interrogated, if the NSA team had gotten free already. But she'd remember to report her credit cards missing soon. It was a pretty big risk using them, but she had no other choice. Her purchases were necessary. Waiting until nightfall and breaking in and stealing them would have been even riskier.

The clerk offered to help carry everything out to her car, which would be awkward when the man realized she didn't have a car, so she refused.

Sarah carefully put some of the baby blankets in the basket area of the cart, making a kind of nest, before putting Lisa in so she could push more effectively. She loitered in the parking lot until she saw a minivan pull in and a family pile out. She waited until they were all out of sight before she pushed the cart over and stole their car. It was simple enough, but her tools were crude, a couple bobby pins and a flathead screw driver she had just purchased, where she was used to custom made lockpicks, but they got the job done. Even with her foot looped through the bar so the cart with her baby in it wouldn't drift, it was fairly simple. Her head still felt stuffed full of wool, but somehow crying had helped.

It only took a few minutes to put everything in the van, but she took the time to tear open the baby carrier and loop it over her neck and tuck Lisa into it, snug and secure across her chest.

She couldn't risk going back to their house, just down the pass in Clarkdale, Arizona, or paying with a credit card at any reputable hotel, so she just drove. Eventually the car would be reported stolen. Eventually, but not until the family came out of Wal-mart, and it would probably be an hour or two before the description filtered through to the patrol cars. She had time enough to make it at least as far as Phoenix, where she could steal another car and find a hotel. It was only a two hour drive, and if she hadn't been about to fall over from exhaustion two hours on the road was no problem.

Then Lisa woke up, and started crying. Sarah pulled over and checked the standards, no dirty diaper, no noticeable gaping wounds, no nothing. She cooed at her and rocked her and waggled her fingers in her face, but nothing seemed to work. She finally realized why Lisa was crying, and this was going to be awkward. Sarah scanned the road in both directions, but figured what the hell, and pulled up her scrub top. She held Lisa to her breast, but she wouldn't do anything.

Sarah tried to remember what the baby books said. When she remembered, Sarah blushed, but rolled her nipple between her fingers, until she got it erect, then tried again. This time Lisa latched on and Sarah winced. She'd hoped the tender nipples and sore breasts she'd suffered through during much of her pregnancy would have magically disappeared just the second she gave birth. It wasn't something covered by the baby books she'd read. Sarah had made Chuck buy her one baby book, and then over the last few months she'd been inundated with probably every baby book or pregnancy manual that existed. It had been a little ridiculous, but cute. Which was just Chuck in a nutshell.

Sarah looked down and smiled. During her pregnancy she'd hoped the baby would inherit chuck's dark hair, but the tiny blond curls were a little bit of both of them, even what?-- six hours, eight hours after being born, already they were making funny animal shapes for her to play with. It felt... good was kind of pushing it, but Sarah could tell that her baby was eating well, which was a bigger relief than she had expected. She didn't want to have to resort to formula, it would feel like a failure on her part. After maybe a quarter of an hour, Lisa spit out her breast and gurgled happily. Sarah tugged her scrub top down and realized she hadn't bought any clothes for herself when she had the chance at Wal-mart.

Lisa eventually went to milk-filled sleep, and Sarah laid her down on the front seat. She got out, hopped in the back, and tore open the package of knives and cut open the car seat. It was times like these that she really missed Chuck. Take down a six man NSA team guarding her in a hospital eight hours after giving birth and steal her newborn daughter out of the neonatal unit? Please, she was Sarah Walker, CIA super-spy extraordinaire, once upon a time anyway. Putting together any type of packaged consumer good, that was Chuck's wheelhouse, not hers. God she just wanted to sleep, but that wasn't in the cards right now.

After about ten minutes she realized she was reading the Russian instructions, instead of the English, needlessly complicating matters. Sure, _she _was fluent in Russian, but whoever wrote these instructions obviously wasn't, so she switched to the English version. It wasn't much better, but she managed to get the car seat put together before Lisa woke up from her nap. Once she had the thing buckled into the front seat, with Lisa safely tucked inside, Sarah was almost dead on her feet. She climbed in, put the keys in the ignition, but nodded away before she could restart the engine.

Knocking on the glass pulled her from her brief nap. Of course it was a cop.

"Excuse me miss." The officer, a large man with a shiny bald forehead said. "You need some help?"

"No, I just fell asleep. Long shift at the hospital, and my baby's been keeping me up nights."

"Can't your husband help out?"

"He's out of the picture."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Ms. ..."

"Taggart." Sarah said, "Moira."

"I'm Carl." His radio buzzed, and the officer rolled his eyes. "Excuse me."

Sarah listened as the APB on her stolen minivan was sent out. She pulled her gun. "Don't try it Carl."

"Jesus." He said as Sarah opened the car door.

"Back up three steps." She said, gun steady. "I really don't like killing cops, but I can't let you take me."

"Look I know things seem bad right now, but you don't want to shoot me." Carl said. "Think of your daughter."

"Do not move." Sarah said, undoing Carl's gun belt and letting it drop to the ground. "Okay, now walk. Over to your car."

"What the hell kind of car thief are you?" Carl said.

Sarah rolled her eyes and decided, screw it. "The CIA kind. Now get in the back seat."

"CIA?" Carl said, shaking his head, shock painting his face.

"Keys." Sarah demanded, hand out. She slammed the door shut on Officer Carl and threw the keys off into the sage brush.

The new surge of adrenaline lasted her through the drive to a supermarket parking lot. She changed the plates off half a dozen cars around, eventually taking the plates of a blue two door coupe and putting them on a gray midsize family sedan. Sarah was worried about leaving Lisa in the van, so she left the engine running and locked the doors, and she kept one eye on the van in the hope that no one noticed a seemingly unattended baby. She really needed to find a big city to hunker down in, or at the very least get herself off grid again, somehow. Without some kind of false ID it would be difficult if not impossible to stay ahead of the NSA, and she had burned all her cover identities. But, NSA had no mandate to operate in the US, so there shouldn't be roadblocks or the like, the real danger was all the crimes she was committing to stay one step ahead. It wasn't enough. She needed someone she trusted, someplace to lie low and just sit and plan. She needed time to rest, recover, get back in some decent kind of shape. As much as she hated it, she was probably going to have to call her sister.

***

1232 MST

"Peters." The voice on the other end said. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief.

"Renee. It's me." She said. "I need help."

"Me who? Barry white?"

"Blond Lobster." Sarah said into the pocket voice synthesizer she'd cobbled together from parts shoplifted from a Radio Shack on the way to her motel.

"Son of a bitch." Renee said. "What did Dad do this time?"

"It's not about Dad, Renee. Jesus, I haven't even heard from him in two years. We can't talk on the phone. This is important."

"Sis, come on. What are you into? I can't get you out of trouble anyway. I'm not FBI anymore."

"Not on the _phone_, Renee." Sarah said with a touch more force. "Damn it. I'll call back. Do you have a secure number?"

"Not anymore. What's wrong?"

"Just the baby is waking up. I'll call right back."

Renee sat with the phone in her hand, staring at the receiver. "Baby?" She said, shaking her head. "You're in more trouble than I thought."

Sarah cupped Lisa gently, coaxing her to latch on. It was hardly the first time, but Sarah still had trouble really feeling good about breast feeding. If her doctor in Cottonwood hadn't been so adamant about it being best for the baby she probably would have stuck to formula just to make her life on the run easier. But her Lisa was worth a little discomfort, and the doctor she'd met on the bus out to Phoenix had insisted the tenderness would subside, but still no sign of that happening.

Sarah sighed and checked the bandages on her left arm, one from the bullet graze and the other from where her IV had torn out in the struggle back at the hospital. She yawned, leaned back against the headboard and was asleep before she knew it.

The mewling sound woke her up barely two hours later, and Sarah flinched, taking in her surroundings in an instant of panic before it all came back into focus. She felt the weight in her arms and smiled. "Hungry again?" She asked. Lisa's eyes were still shut, so Sarah couldn't tell just yet what color they were, though her daughter had inherited _her_ hair, which meant she'd probably got the eyes as well. But the doctor had said those things could change, blonde hair and blue eyes on an infant could change. She was a little conflicted about whether she wanted that to happen or not.

She wanted the baby to share some of Chuck's outward features, so that when people saw them together they'd know instantly that he was Lisa's father. She was taken and the baby should be conclusive evidence of that, but judging by Carl's reaction, other men were still going to look, and it was just another frustration when she didn't have Chuck around to keep her warm and get the cute little jealous-nervous stammers. Sarah shifted her daughter to her other arm, despite the wounds. The port tank was getting a little low. She managed a grin at the latest of what she was probably going to start calling her 'Chuck-isms.' Things that she had to come up with that Chuck might have said, because he wasn't there. Yet. Sarah held onto that thought.

Her eyelids drooped a little, but the muscle pain from the stitches in her left arm kept her from falling into dreamland again. Scrounging for the phone and voice synth again, Sarah dialed.

"Me again." She said when Renee picked up.

"Is that really necessary, Mr. White?"

"Yes. Think why that would be. But don't say it out loud."

"Jesus christ, Sa--"

"No names."

"Son of a bitch." Renee put the phone to her forehead for a moment to think. "What do you want?"

"You still in DC?"

"No, I moved back home."

"The old house?" Sarah asked, memories flooding.

"No. I'm in Colorado Springs."

"I can drive that. Reset your answering machine code to my birthday. Leave the address as a voicemail."

"Sis. What's going on."

"I'll tell you tomorrow when I get in." The line went dead.

"Damn it Sam. What the fuck is going on."

***

1545 MST

Sarah's first stop before fleeing Arizona was a dive bar, where she found it simple to locate a 'second-hand' gun seller willing to make purchases. Making a deal however, was anything but simple. The meeting took place in a dusty plain behind the bar, overlooking a flood reservoir for when the snowmelt from the Sonoras came down into the lowlands around Phoenix.

"Serious lady?" The gun seller said, eyes roaming over her in a way that made her trigger finger itch. "You sure you ready for this business? You think because you bring your kid you some kind of hardcore bitch?"

"Watch your language." Sarah said.

"What, little bitch can't understand shit at that age."

Before she could stop it, her hand snapped out, throwing knife spinning out of the wrist sheath into her hand and flashing out to hit him in the elbow. Sarah breathed a sigh of relief that she had managed to keep the throw out of the man's throat.

"Fucking bitch!" The seller growled, his non-wounded hand going behind his back. But Sarah was faster, even running on maybe six hours sleep in the last thirty six hours and still almost dead on her feet from giving birth. She closed the distance and pressed the silencer of her Beretta to his forehead. He didn't have the training to snatch the gun out of her hand, she hoped. It was a bad idea getting close, she knew that, but her exhaustion was getting the better of her training now, and intimidating him had seemed important.

"Sit down." Sarah said, pushing him back a step with the tip of the silencer.

He sat back on the front bumper of his car. "Shit."

Sarah put a round into the dirt between his feet and pressed the silencer back into his forehead. "Watch. Your. Language."

"Alright lady, alright!" He said, putting his good hand up. "You gonna rob me, you gonna rob me. Ain't much I can do about it now, aight."

"I'm not going to rob you. And I already have too many guns so keep yours. I've got half a dozen pistols I need to move. Governemt issue, mostly nine mil."

"Yeah?" He said gingerly. "I need you to get this f-- freaking knife out my arm."

"I've got a first aid kit in my car. Give me your bullets."

"What the f-- Why?"

"I'm not risking my daughter taking a stray round if you try to kill me when my back is turned. Take out your gun, eject the clip, hand it to me. You can keep the one in the chamber as insurance."

He laughed, impressed. "You single?"

Sarah glared at her bare left ring finger, though the weight of her rings on their chain was reassuring. "No. Feds stole my wedding ring when they arrested me."

"Too bad, you got style." He nodded to himself. "Must be some bad a-- ahem... Must be a bad dude to keep you in line."

Sarah smiled without mirth. "I keep him in line."

"You ever think of trading up?"

"What, to you?" Sarah laughed. Plopping the first aid kit down on the car hood, she went on. "Not only is he smarter and better looking than you? He-- actually, you know what, that's plenty. I don't need to finish the list for you. Once we make this deal you're going to forget you ever met me."

"How hot are these guns anyway?"

"Fifty cents on the dollar retail hot." Sarah said. "Change out the barrels before you resell them hot."

"Twenty five cents on the dollar." He said.

Sarah grunted. "Forty five."

"Thirty"

"Forty."

"Thirty five. I got to cover my costs on all these new barrels."

"Bump it to 1500 total."

"Shit." The gun came back up and he winced. "Sorry, sorry. Deal. What you need cash so bad for anyway."

Sarah fired another shot into the dirt between his feet.

"Jesus! Forget it! Forget it! You're crazy, you know that, lady?"

"So my husband always tells me. On him it's cute."

"Cute?" The gun merchant said, managing a smirk.

"Just get me my money. And forget we met."

***

0630 MST Next day

Sarah had considered buying a cheap used car, but she only had limited cash reserves, even after selling off the NSA team's sidearms, and didn't want to risk having to steal cars just to get full tanks of gas, and then there was no guarantee they'd be full anyway. Either way it would be necessary, just not as often. She bought a bus ticket as far as Denver before resorting once more to grand theft auto. She managed to get some sleep on the bus, but not enough. Sitting in the Aisle seat with Lisa in her car seat in the window seat was hardly a great place to fall asleep, though she was sure nobody would be idiot enough to try leaning across her to snatch the baby. Despite that thought swimming around, she slept fitfully. Sarah knew that her inability to stay awake was partly the residual effects of being drugged out of her gourd and losing more blood than she would have liked in squeezing out seven and a half pounds of precious baby girl, but she couldn't just stop and stay in one place, not unless she knew Lisa was safe there.

Sarah eventually pulled her final stolen car, one of the newer ones with the five star crash ratings —she'd done her homework— into a gas Station in Colorado springs, got out and trudged down the road until she found a motel. The clerk tried to hassle her out of an additional baby deposit, and she finally had to flash her gun at him to make him stop trying to flirt with her. She put Lisa's carseat, with Lisa bundled up in it, on the chair and grabbed the phone on the bedside table and dialed her sister's voicemail for the address. The cab she had the lecherous sleaze from the front desk call only took twenty minutes to show up.

She had the driver leave her half a dozen blocks from her sister Renee's house, and paid him double the fare to forget about her. Not perfect by any means, but better than nothing as far as tradecraft went.

She used the walk to try to figure out what to say to her sister after so many years, especially showing up like this, newborn infant, barely walking under her own steam anymore. Carrying the car seat wasn't making things any easier, but she'd need it later, and it was definitely lighter with Lisa strapped securely to her back. The only problem with it was she couldn't look down at her or play with those golden curls.

How did six blocks ever seem like a good idea, Sarah thought, knuckling her back. But she soldiered on, and finally knocked at her sister's door after more than twenty years apart.

A tall redhead opened the door. "Renee?" Sarah asked, feeling foolish, but the hair was surprising. The older woman in a bathrobe yawned and eyed her up and down.

"You look like shit. Come on in. I've got some coffee on."

Sarah sighed. "Mmm. Coffee." She breathed, handing over the empty car seat. "One cup's my limit." At her sister's quizzical expression, she shrugged. "Don't want too much caffeine in the breast milk or Lisa will be fussy all night."

"Is that who that is on your back?" Renee grinned. "Lisa Peters Junior?"

Sarah Frowned. "Bartowski."

"Sam Bartowski? It's got a ring to it, but I'm not sure if you should accept the charges. As far as cover names go I've heard better."

"It's no cover. I took his name when we got married."

"Married." Renee said flatly. "Here I thought you'd be an unwed mother."

Sarah shrugged. "What can I say. Sorry to disappoint."

"Enough." She said. "Stop beating around the bush. Stop deflecting. Tell me why the conman sister I haven't seen since before she was in a training bra shows up out of the blue. What are you hiding?"

Sarah grimaced, then nodded acquiescence. "Okay. Okay. I'm CIA."

"Bullshit."

"Hey, language. I was deep cover. That's why I couldn't make mom's funeral. If you wanted to know."

"Bullshit." Renee said again. "Why the voice synth and the code phrases on the phone, or that crap with the voice mailbox? If you... oh shit. You went dark."

"The NSA kidnapped my husband, arrested me without charges and tried to take my daughter from me to use as leverage against him. You're god..." Her eyes twitched over her shoulder. "Danged right I went dark."

"God, Sammie. Why would they do all of that? What were you into?"

"I can't tell you. It's classified. Codeword stuff." Sarah rubbed her temples with both hands. "I need your help."

"I don't have access anymore, Sis." She paused. "You knew that when you called. What do you want from me."

"Just a place to stay, maybe a workout buddy? I haven't been getting any sleep lately, what with breaking out of hospitals and running from NSA cleaner teams and breastfeeding nonstop. I need to get back in shape, fast. And then, I'm going to need a ride to Fort Meade." Her stomach growled loud enough for Renee to hear. "And breakfast if you have it?"

"This husband of yours. What did he do?"

"I told you, it's classified."

"Bull. Tell me. I'm not going to let you spring your scumbag boyfriend from NSA holding without some idea of what he did to get there in the first place."

"Scumbag!" Sarah said indignantly, hand twitching unconsciously for a gun or a knife, except she couldn't kill her sister, and in her current condition, FBI training would probably give her older sister a fighting chance in a fistfight. "You don't talk about him like that. He didn't do anything." She said, giving it up as futile to attempt to maintain secrecy. "My old partner sent him an email, NSA and CIA databases in a new visual encoding format."

"So what? It was encoded..."

"He remembers it." Sarah said, more forcefully than she meant to. "If he sees something, or someone who's in the database, he sees their file."

Renee blinked. "And that's why the NSA kidnapped him?"

"I may have taken him off grid about a year ago to avoid being reassigned and never seeing him again."

"May have?"

"All right fine. It was a stupid, reckless thing to do, but..."

"God, you really have it bad."

"And I had seven months of vacation saved up, so I figured we could negotiate something, and then one thing led to another, and now I'm on maternity leave from the CIA, but the NSA is gunning for me."

"CIA gives maternity leave? I'm shocked."

"I'm a Federal employee, just like you. Of course I get maternity leave."

"Past tense, Sam, I _was_ a Federal employee."

Sarah frowned. "Actually, I go by Sarah now. Do you mind?"

"No, whatever, Sarah it is."

"What happened, by the way? I heard you were this big FBI hero after the attacks on DC, and then next I hear you're out on your butt."

"Hey, how did this conversation become about me?" Renee said. "If the NSA's trying to arrest you, how are you still a CIA employee? Shouldn't they be hunting you down too?"

"CIA wants us, me and Chuck, to work out of the Farm, training new agents. They're working on a way to find more people like him, there'll be honest to god CIA supercomputers running around on two legs before too much longer. NSA wants to keep him in a bunker, and away from his wife and daughter. Illegally, I might add. Director of the NSA is going to get my foot up her ass once I'm back in fighting trim."

"That's crazy. This'll never work Sarah. What are you going to do, break into her house and threaten her at gunpoint?"

Sarah grinned, eyes shining. "Maybe."

A/N: So, I'm debating how far to flash back from here. All the way back to Burbank after intersect 2.0, or just back as far as the NSA finding them at their safehouse? I have some of both sections written.


	3. Chapter 3: Complications

A/N: I shouldn't post this right now. This chapter hasn't been proofread up to proper standards. Might be a little confusing. My roommate threw a kicking party, and I'm drunk. This is mostly flashback-y, and a break from the bleakness of Sarah on the run.

Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck.

Chapter 3: Complications

Sarah woke up with a stabbing pain in her belly. "Oh, god. Chuck wake up! Wake up! Chuck!" Sarah screamed.

"What's wrong. Are you okay?"

"Its the baby. Something-- agh! Something's wrong." Chuck turned on the bedside lamp, and shifted, throwing the blankets off. She tentatively felt the wetness in her panties. Her hand came away red. "Oh god... Chuck!" She said, showing him.

Her curly headed nerd immediately scooped her up out of their bed and carried her out to the car. Sarah was in tears before they made it to the hospital. Chuck kept up a steady stream of reassurances, calming words, but she didn't believe them any more than he did.

Chuck parked diagonally across three handicapped spots, jumped out and ran around to help Sarah out of the passenger side. A uniformed police officer came over. "Hey buddy you can't park here."

"Screw you, pal." Chuck said, hoisting Sarah up and making for the entrance.

The officer scowled and started to say something, until he spotted the faint, but clearly visible trail of blood they left.

Chuck spun at the last second and backed through the doors into the ER. "I need some help here!"

A nurse ran up. "What's wrong."

Sarah wiped at her cheeks, sniffling. Her voice quavered a little at first, but by the end, the steel was back in it. "Sharp lower left quadrant pain, I'm six months pregnant and bleeding." The nurse's eyebrows went up.

"Let's get you into an exam room and prep you for an ultrasound. Is your OBGYN on staff here?"

"Doctor Reynolds." Sarah said. The nurse nodded to a couple of orderlies with a wheelchair. Chuck's arms tightened around Sarah possessively.

"I've got her," he said, instantly defensive. The nurse rolled her eyes and motioned him to follow.

"911 Page Dr. Reynolds to exam three. And get me an attending!"

Barely a minute later, a young ER doc came skidding into the exam room. They kicked Chuck out then, despite his protests, and he stood there in the hall, grinding his teeth and wringing his hands.

The cop from earlier walked up, a cup of coffee in each hand. "Here. Give me your keys and I'll move your car to an empty spot. She and the baby alright?"

Chuck shrugged. "I don't know. They kicked me out. Can't really blame them. I was losing it worse than she is. But what else is new, right?"

"Hang in there. She's going to need to lean on you if this doesn't work out right."

Chuck closed his eyes and handed over his keys, trying his damnedest not to think about how they would deal with things if it 'doesn't work out right.'"

He sank to the ground, leaning against the wall outside Sarah's exam room, sitting on the floor. Chuck rested his head in his hands and waited, coffee forgotten. The police officer, he said his name was Jim Foster, came back and returned his keys, told him where he'd parked the car. Chuck was grateful the man didn't try to talk to him any more than that. He was barely holding it together when the doctor came out.

"Chuck Murtaugh." He said, and Chuck shot to his feet, startling the doctor. "Jesus! Come on in."

"Is... are they?" Chuck started. The man made a soothing, calming gesture and led the way back into the exam room.

"Mom and baby are both... well, not fine. But, we know what's happening in there, and it's serious, but we can deal with it. The baby's heartbeat is strong. Oh, I'm Dr. Stevens, sorry about that. Right, introductions can probably wait." said, rambling a little. Chuck gravitated to Sarah's side, snatching her hand from the side of the bed and squeezing. They hadn't cleaned the ultrasound gel off her yet, and Chuck had an uneasy feeling about it all. The return squeeze was hard enough to pop his knuckles, but Chuck didn't so much as wince.

"Okay, doc." Sarah said, all business once more, and Chuck realized she was being 'Agent Walker,' divorcing herself from her emotions in order not to break down again, and he smiled wistfully. Chuck pulled their twined hands up to his lips and planted a quick kiss on her knuckles. A nurse came and handed Sarah a package of baby wipes, helping to wipe the gunk off her midsection.

Stevens wheeled the ultrasound machine around so they could both see, and rewound the tape. "You see this here..." He pointed. "This is the baby here, and... okay, yes." He paused the recording and drew his finger down a darker section of the picture. "This is the problem. You have what is known as placenta previa. It's not really treatable, but this is a mild case. And it is manageable."

"Mild." Chuck said, sarcasm heavy.

The doctor fixed him with a glare. "Yes. In many cases of Placenta Previa, the placenta attaches to the uterine wall lower than it should, or improperly, covering the cervical opening entirely and making a natural birth difficult if not impossible. We usually catch these things early, but it looks like you have some scar tissue around the area that disguised the problem. This is kind of a delicate question..." He looked directly at Chuck when he said that. "Recurrent broken ribs and deep tissue bruising of this nature is often associated with abuse victims and--

Sarah cut him off. "Don't even finish that sentence. I'm a kickboxing instructor."

"Oh. Right. Well, yes, that could explain it too." Stevens looked a little embarrassed, but moved along quickly in an effort to get through it. "Okay, back to the matter at hand. In more severe cases, we'd only wait a few weeks for the fetus to be viable before doing an emergency C-section. But you only have a partial obstruction, what we call a marginal previa, and judging from the ultrasound, your baby is a little small for her gestational age, so there's a good chance that as she grows the obstruction could resolve itself, and then we wouldn't have to do the c-section."

"She?" Chuck said, beaming down at his wife. Sarah pouted briefly and Chuck couldn't contain himself. He gave her a big smooch on the forehead. She rolled her eyes and wiped herself with her free hand.

"Yes, fine. You were right." She said, and switched her focus back to the doctor. "So you said it's manageable. What's that involve."

"Well, you're going to want to discuss this with your OBGYN in more detail, he can tell you more specifically what he thinks you two should do and shouldn't do. But standard procedure here is complete bedrest, including pelvic rest. The key is not to put any stress on the core muscles that will be used in childbirth. Any undue strain could tear the placenta and, then you'd have an abruption and bleed out before we could do anything."

"I get what bedrest is." Chuck said. "What the heck is pelvic rest?"

"I really think you should discuss that with your OBGYN. Doctor Reynolds isn't on call tonight, but he said he was on the way."

Sarah skewered him with her cold blue eyes. "What, is pelvic rest." She said, brooking no nonsense.

Stevens winced and shrugged. "No sex."

"Ow. Sarah ow!" Chuck said, collapsing to his knees next to the hospital bed. "You're crushing my hand."

"What do you _mean_, no sex!" She bellowed.

***

Doctor Reynolds arrived a few minutes later and took the time while Chuck was icing his hand to schedule a time for their weekly ultrasounds, then explained things to the more rational member of the couple—at least at the moment. "We'll re-assess the situation after every ultrasound, but I don't think its a good idea to risk sex at this point."

Chuck coughed and grunted something under his breath.

"Speak up."

"It's just that... since the pregnancy, Sarah's been a little, ...more aggressive than usual," Chuck said. "And now you're saying I'm supposed to what, just cut her off cold turkey?"

"If you want to keep her and the baby safe and healthy, yes." Chuck sighed. What about keeping _me_ safe and healthy? He couldn't ask.

Chuck gave it twenty minutes before he went back in to check on Sarah, figuring that would be enough time to be safe. She was still upset, but it looked like she _had_ calmed down, a little, anyway. "Hey." He said, standard noncommittal greeting, hoping it would be acceptable.

Sarah grunted, not a good sign, and waved him over. Once he was in arm's reach, Sarah grabbed him and pulled him in close. "Don't you ever leave me alone again if you know what's good for you." She growled.

Chuck nodded mutely for several seconds before he could get words to come out. "Anything you say, just don't crush my spine."

Sarah scoffed. "I'm going to need you for diaper duty, so I can't kill you for abandoning me for at least two years."

"Good to know." Chuck said, laughing from nerves. "Am I going to have to keep knocking you up periodically just to not get killed?"

Sarah nuzzled up against him. "Couldn't hurt." She said at last, and they shared a chuckle.

"You going to be okay?" He asked after the silence stretched out into awkwardness. "I know this sucks, but..." He tried to grin but it came off feeble. "We went three years without, three months can't be that bad. Right?"

Sarah glared at him out of the corner of her eye, unwilling to turn and face him directly. "I went three years without. You, on the other hand, were bedding down some brunette slut every time my back was turned."

"Hey now." Chuck started. "That's not what—"

Sarah cut him off angrily. "No you don't. I'm pregnant, I'm not required to get my facts straight. But you still got your rocks off at least once that I know about with Jill. And we weren't cover-broken up at the time. Now I'm medically prohibited from getting laid? I can't even take care of matters myself." Sarah said. "Something about muscle contractions and blah blah blah..." She made her hand into a flapping sock puppet to illustrate what she thought of the doctor's strictures. Chuck looped an arm around her, sitting on the side of the bed so he could hold her. "They say I'm going to have to stay overnight to make sure the bleeding's stopped for good."

Chuck kissed the top of Sarah's head. "I'm not going anywhere. We're in this together, baby. I promise."

Sarah turned her head to look at him. "Really." She said, voice full of doubt. "I remember how many times you had to 'use the bathroom' after one of our cover dates back in the old days." Chuck turned purple with embarrassment and Sarah winced. "Sorry. Pregnancy hormones have taken off the safeties on my dirty mouth. I don't even know what I'm saying half the time."

Chuck kissed her again. "Don't worry. I still love you."

"You'd better."

He chuckled, and hugged her with one arm, amused that she still had trouble saying it out loud despite how often she showed him in every little thing she did, in the way she looked at him. They sat there in silence for about a minute as he mulled over her words, trying to figure out what it was she was having trouble saying. Realization finally came. "I loved you for a long time before I finally said it. I can't point to the exact moment. But I'm sure it was before I figured out you loved me. Maybe it was on that rooftop where you almost pulled your gun on a CIA agent to stop me from going to the bunker."

Sarah shifted to look at him. "You noticed that?"

"I notice everything you do. Always have." Chuck shrugged. "I'll just have to figure out another way to show you I love you, if me telling you every couple hours gets old."

***

Days later, they lay in bed, Chuck with his arm draped over her side, his hand under her shirt, pressed against her belly. Sarah was holding his wrist, guiding him. "There." She said. "Feel that?"

Chuck kissed the side of her neck. "I love you." He said. "But no, I don't—Whoa. That's some kick. Takes after her mother."

"I know, right? My kidneys will be grateful to get her out of there."

"Is it really that bad?"

"Well, apart from not being able to have sex while being constantly horny, not being able to kick the hell out of a heavy bag to bleed off stress, or go to the firing range to keep in practice, having to be waited on like an invalid all the time, only being able to leave the bed to shower and poop, and don't forget the morning sickness that never really went away, having what seems like a gymnastics team doing tumbling practice in my stomach is hardly high on the annoyance meter."

Chuck sighed. "I'm sorry. But you're supposed to like being waited on hand and foot."

"It's not that I dislike the attention, Hon." Sarah shrugged. "I just wish... well..."

"I did catch a passing reference to you being 'constantly horny.'" Chuck said, grinning into her hair.

"Ugh." Sarah grumbled. "Don't even say the word, okay. You're making it worse."

"Sure." Chuck said, kissing her shoulder. "I'm sorry. We'll get through this, I promise."

"Good." She said, and turned to face him, twisting awkwardly so she didn't have to shift the great swell of her pregnant belly. "Great. Excellent." She pursed her lips in a pout and he gave her a quick smooch. "How exactly?"

He thought about it for a while. "Okay, well first, we need to get your mind off sex."

Sarah nodded. "_Yes we do_. What do you suggest?"

"I don't know. Why don't you take a nap?"

She glared at him. "I'll 'nap' you. Where's my gun?" Sarah scrabbled for the nightstand halfheartedly.

"You just gave me an idea. I'll be right back." He said, springing out of bed.

Sarah levered herself up in bed awkwardly on her elbows. It seemed like she did everything awkwardly lately. Her muscles were wasting away and her belly ballooning into ridiculousness at about the same pace, it seemed. "Where the hell are you going?"

But Chuck was back only a minute or so later, lugging the TV from the living room. Sarah frowned. "What exactly are you planning?"

"Just one minute." And then he was gone again. When he returned at last, he had his Xbox tucked under one arm and the other hand was full of cables.

"Oh, god." She breathed. "You're going to make me play _video_ games? I love, you but there are some things that a girl just has to say..." Chuck tossed her the box to Call of duty.

"You get to shoot people."

"Computer people."

"Once I hook up the internet in here, you can shoot actual people through the magic of online gaming. It may not be super-realistic, but maybe it'll help you bleed some of your hyper-competitive spirit off."

"I'm not hyper-competitive." Sarah said.

"Yesterday you bet me you could eat a whole pizza in one sitting." Chuck pointed out.

"And I did it just like I said. What's your point?"

"Nothing. Let's just see how you do." Chuck said, plugging everything in. He didn't just throw her in the deep end, but let her play through the tutorials and dozed off with his head in Sarah's lap before she hit the first level.

A couple hours later she woke him up to go to the 24-hour supermarket to get food. Then she kept calling him with more food requests every time he was heading for the checkout. When he finally got back from the grocery store a couple hours later, and put away all the groceries, Sarah was blazing through the single player campaign at record speed. He recognized the level, it was toward the end.

"Having fun?"

"Absolutely." She growled. "This game is ridiculous Chuck. I mean, seriously? None of it makes any sense. A full scale Russian invasion of the United States? It's completely beyond belief. Even if they did find a dead American at a terror attack, there's no way that's grounds for war. We're not the Taliban, and the Russians know it."

"I don't know, it seemed pretty believable in Red Dawn."

"They didn't even _have_ a reason to invade in Red Dawn. It was classic Red Scare cinema." She spotted Chuck grinning, and scowled. Was he laughing at her? "It was ridiculous in the eighties, its even more ridiculous with the Russian military drawn down to where they are today. And this general needs to have his ass kicked."

"Just wait until the next level. But you think you have the hang of it? Gameplay wise."

"Oh, sure. It's actually pretty easy, if unrealistic." She said. "I had to turn off autoaim; it made everything way too easy."

"Here, scooch." Chuck said, burrowing under the covers.

"Hey get out from under there." Sarah complained. "I'm all stinky, I haven't showered in days."

"We've had this conversation before. I still don't care." Chuck said, blowing a raspberry into her midsection.

"Ah! Hey!" Sarah growled. "Cut it out. Oh, damnit!" She smacked him on the back. "You just got my guy killed."

"Sorry." Chuck said. "I didn't think you'd be taking this so seriously."

"Wasn't I supposed to take it seriously? To keep my mind off things."

"Yeah," Chuck said, taking up station behind Sarah in the bed, leaning her back into him so he could loop his arms around her. "So." He whispered into her ear. "I bought a second controller."

Sarah turned a little in his arms so she could look at him. "There's two player? I won't have to fight you will I?"

"Nope. We'll team up against everybody else on the planet. If you want we could look up Morgan and team up."

"Chuck, that's dangerous."

"Hey, my Gamertag is new, and linked to our Murtaugh email address. Besides, I doubt Beckman would think to run background checks on every single player Morgan runs into online."

"That's probably true, but what if he recognizes your voice?" Sarah said.

"We won't use the microphone."  
"Then how will we communicate with our team?"

Chuck grinned. "You're really getting into this."

Sarah rolled her eyes.

***

UNDISCLOSED LOCATION

"The Burbank team we were closing in on? The one that disappeared at the end of September?" The shadowy figure said. "You think you've found them?"

"Yes, that's correct. We've managed to get someone in close to Beckman, junior man, not even a field agent, just a computer nerd, but he's been analyzing her bandwidth usage. Over the last few months she's had brief daily teleconferences with someone on the other end of a heavily encrypted datalink."

"What exactly does that entail."

"They've perfected a Tapdance capable video link. Entirely random, the encryption key is the length of the entire message."

"Tapdance is a CIA project."

"Exactly sir, which is highly suggestive. The Burbank team that dismantled Fulcrum was a joint NSA/CIA task force, so chances are this is the same team."

"Is that all?"

"No, analysis of other video conferences by Beckman and others shows that there is an immense amount of data being shunted along the datastream, disguised by it."

"So, she's sending large amounts of data to this unknown location?"

"Yes, given the level of encryption and the difficulty in setting up Tapdance outside of standard agency protocols, we believe this to be the Intersect's secret offsite location."

"So the intersect station is being monitored by the Burbank team?"

"It's possible someone on the Burbank team that destroyed the second intersect uploaded it, and we may have a new human intersect running loose."

"Given the trouble Larkin gave Fulcrum and our other interests abroad, what is our assessment of the damage this new intersect could do to us."

"The six months before the Burbank team disappeared, they were eating into cells at an alarming rate. I would estimate that the second human intersect was still adapting to the complications the new intersect entailed during that time. Now that Beckman is back in touch with the 2.0 team, we have begun to see mission failure rates rising all across the country, even without the human intersect being directly involved."

"Do we have information on the location of the Burbank team now?"

"No sir. One of them, the NSA man, a Colonel Casey, is working out of Fort Meade as Beckman's attack dog, but the female agent, who we believe to be CIA, and Carmichael have disappeared off the face of the earth. The female agent, her file is so heavily edited, we have no idea of her true identity. Aliases buried under aliases, and her current cover name is unknown. We know next to nothing about this Carmichael, his file is empty, a placeholder to make certain that his credentials come through as valid. Whoever he really is, the CIA is bending over backwards to keep him out of our crosshairs, though Jill Roberts of Fulcrum was said to be close to seducing him when she was captured. We have yet to find any trace of her after her escape from the recruitment center. If she knows Carmichael's true identity, capturing her would be extremely useful. Considering what I saw in Barstow however, we should assume that Carmichael and the blond are together at this point, wherever they are."

"Anything else to add?"

"Yes, the likelihood is that Carmichael uploaded the new intersect himself when Larkin was disabled in the chamber, the female agent and Colonel Casey were outside of the chamber. I have engaged the services of a sketch artist to gain a likeness of agent Carmichael, and I am in negotiations with a freelance hacker to trace the datastream to its origin point. It's difficult work, they keep bouncing the signal more and more ingeniously every time. I doubt even the NSA knows where their team is in the world. But my hacker assures me he will be successful in the next few weeks. From there, the strike team should be well equipped to take Carmichael into custody."

"Thank you, Vincent. It's good to have you back. We only wish our doctors had been able to save your legs after the attack on Black Rock. Your talents in the field will be sorely missed."

"Thank you." He said, unlatching the brakes on his wheelchair and spinning one wheel to turn away. It would be unprofessional to let them see his anger at the situation.

"Your professionalism through this trying time has been noted, and your loyalty will not go unrewarded." The shadow shrouded man in the middle of the committee said.

A/N 2: All Chuck's POV next chapter. I need to work on my thesis and grade papers, so next update will be a few days.


	4. Chapter 4: Ring of Fire

A/N: Still flashback. In this chapter: Chuck and Sarah get some good news from their doctor. Also: gunfire, explosions, anarchy in the streets. Action-packed is how they say it in Hollywood.

I'm debating whether this story really needs the M classification. Thoughts?

Disclaimer: Blah. Don't own Chuck. Blah.

Chapter 4: Ring of Fire

Sarah was grinning like the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary on the way back from this week's ultrasound. Doctor Reynolds had finally given them the long awaited news, that everything was ship-shape in her belly again, so to speak. It was still just kind of belly shaped, had been Chuck's considered response to the doctor's attempt at levity. Sarah had specifically asked her doctor five times if it was okay for them to resume the sexual component of their relationship, though of course, she hadn't phrased it like that. That was Chuck trying to be respectful in front of the doctor. Sarah had been much less restrained in seeking the gory details of what they could and couldn't do.

And there were conditions, specific things she couldn't have Chuck do to her that she'd been missing for almost three months. That, Sarah wasn't thrilled with. She still wasn't relieved completely from bed rest either, though the doctor had relaxed that part of her treatment a little as well. The doctor had strictly forbid her from resuming any kind of workout regimen, but she couldn't really make herself care. The only workout she was looking forward to today was in the bedroom. She still had to be sitting, or lying down for at least eighteen hours a day, but even just the thought of being able to walk to the mail box and back was enough to put her in a good mood. The sex-news made her practically giddy, and drowned out any other possible concerns. Once Chuck pulled the car into the garage Sarah took off her seat belt and threw open her door and started trying to clamber out and waddle to the bedroom.

"Hey, slow down there, Tiger." Chuck said, while the garage door grated shut. He leaped out of the car and slid across the hood to get around to the passenger side faster. "Let me help."

"I'm perfectly capable of standing on my own, Charles Irving Bar-Murtaugh." Sarah flushed at her slip. Chuck grinned. "Wipe that smile off your face and help if you're helping." She held her arms out and he dipped down to pick her up out of the car like always. She looped her arms around his neck and he straightened. He grunted with effort, which was new, cradling her like a groom carrying his bride across the threshold. She'd missed that at their actual wedding.

"Did you put on weight since this morning?"

"What!" Sarah said. "What kind of question is that?" Her feet kicked the air.

"It's just you seem a little doughy around the midsection lately."

Sarah's eyes narrowed, something was off, Chuck didn't normally... She sighed. "You're just trying to rile me up for angry sex." It was decidedly not a question. Sarah was absolutely certain of this.

"Am I that transparent?" Chuck asked. "We've never had angry pregnancy sex."

"Yes. You are exactly that transparent. While there's a first time for everything, hon, I think angry sex is a bad idea right now. I wouldn't want to crush your pelvis."

He grinned. "Death by snoo-snoo. I've heard of worse ways to go."

She gave him a thin smile. He knew she wasn't _really _mad when she made Futurama references. They'd just watched that episode in bed a couple nights earlier when the internet went down and laughed together and snuggled. It had been good. It felt almost too good to be true, just lying in bed watching old cartoons and laughing. He had a glimmer of the feeling he always got back in Burbank right before Casey came over to tell him they had a new mission. A sense of foreboding, but he just put it down to nerves.

Chuck carried her to the door, where Sarah dug her keys out of her purse and reached down one handed to work the lock. They had it down to a science after the ten or so trips to the hospital over the last two and a half months. "I'm not an eight foot tall Amazonian, though."

"Five nine ain't bad honey." Chuck shot back. They squeezed through the doorway sideways.  
"And amazons got nothing on you."

"Laying it on a little thick, there, aren't you?" Sarah mused as he kicked the door to the garage closed behind them.

"I thought maybe I overshot on the angry sex gambit and there wouldn't be _any_ sex." They made there way through the utility room into the front hallway.

"Put me down."

"I did overshoot." Chuck said and let her put her feet back on the ground. "I'm sorry, I thought it would be funny. I didn't really—"

She pinched him on the hip. "Quiet. It's been three months, I'm not letting your motormouth ruin the mood."

"Sorry." He said again and Sarah smiled, full of teeth.

"Stop apologizing, and come on. I can walk thirty feet to the bedroom." She said, suiting her words. Sarah glanced over her shoulder at him and arched an eyebrow, nodded for him to follow. But Chuck was just looking at her waddle away from him. How sexy was that! There was something really wrong with him. He was having another one of his, 'can't believe this is real moments,' but he snapped out of it before she was halfway down the hall, and darted after her.

At this point in her pregnancy, just a couple weeks away from full term, he was noticeably faster than she was, more agile, and Chuck had a good idea why she was being so competitive online lately. Just before he caught up to her, Sarah stumbled half a step and put her hand to the wall to steady herself. Chuck swooped in, slipping an arm around her shoulders. "You okay?"

"Fine, it's nothing. Just some cramps. And the baby isn't being much help on that front either. We've got to decide on a name. She's doing tumbling practice again."

Chuck frowned, but Sarah put his hand on her belly so he could feel her kicking around in there. "How about Lisa."

"My middle name? Wouldn't that be a little weird?"

"No weirder than 'Apple' or 'Pilot Inspector.'" Chuck said. "I like 'Lisa.' Girl's going to be a chip off the old block anyway, I can already tell."

"Fine, Lisa it is. Now let's go."

"Maybe we should hold off on the sex. At least until she goes back to sleep."

Sarah growled in her throat. "If the next words out of your mouth aren't. 'Ha ha just kidding,' I'm going to hit you with a chair and have my way with your unconscious body."

"Um. Ha ha. Just kidding?"

She patted him on the cheek. "Smart man. You know I married you for your brains, right?" Chuck pulled her in for a kiss, and her hands began to dip, tugging at his belt buckle. She pulled him into the bedroom by the belt loops and backed herself neatly to the edge. Sarah pushed herself up on tiptoe to kiss him, when the doorbell rang. She growled again into his mouth."Don't even think about answering that."

Chuck pulled away briefly. "I don't even know what you're talking about. I didn't hear anything." Sarah laughed and fell backwards, trusting Chuck to slow her fall. He let her weight pull him onto the bed, and was careful to land next to rather than on top of her.

"Hands up." Sarah said, all business once again, and started pulling his shirt up off over his head before he had done as she asked. She threw his shirt aside and began to kiss her way down his neck to his chest. The doorbell rang again. "Shh." She whispered hoarsely into his chest. "Don't move. Maybe they'll think we're not here and go away."

Chuck ran his fingers through her hair, causing a shiver to run down her spine. "They probably saw us drive up. It'll stop eventually." The doorbell chimed again, but this time, their early afternoon caller leaned on the thing, pounding nonstop. Chuck groaned. "That's going to be a little distracting, but I'm still game if you are."

Sarah rolled onto her back and huffed angrily. "That's going to be impossibly distracting. Go get rid of them. Take my gun, and shoot them if you have to."

"_Sarah_." Chuck said, and she shrugged. "No guns. I will inform them politely that we have a posted No Solicitors sign, and then I will slam the door in their face."

"Does it still count as coitus interruptus if we didn't even get started?"

"Don't worry, I'll be right back once I get rid of them."

"Make it snappy, or I'll start without you."

Chuck started to walk around the bed for his shirt, but took in her expression. She was serious about starting without him. No time for shirts. As he padded back down the hall, he thought to himself how it might just be simpler to disconnect the doorbell rather than actually spend time talking to whoever it was that thought today was a good day to make a nuisance of themselves door-to-door.

"Relax! I'm coming!" He said, with his voice raised to be heard over the doorbell and through the heavy door. He didn't bother to load up the security screen he'd installed at Sarah's insistence. Things might have turned out differently if he had. "What the hell do you want?" Chuck said, tearing open the front door. He flashed immediately.

***

Vincent was in radio contact with the second team from his van across the street, but they had only been in position for moments when someone drove into the driveway of 1236 Main Street, Clarkdale, AZ. They hadn't had time to set up the cameras yet, and Vincent didn't get a good look. "Was that him?" He said, grating his teeth. "Was that Carmichael?"

"Team-two lead, unable to confirm." A voice said over his headset. "We can't see into the house itself, they've got shutters on most of the windows."

Vincent turned in the passenger seat. There were half a dozen men in full tactical gear crouched in the back. He pointed at random. "You. Put on the Electric Company uniform, get someone to come to the door. Vincent pulled a pair of binoculars from the center console. "Once I identify the target, move in."

The gold watch he had received as a 'retirement' gift told him that is was a little after half past one. This would be a banner day for the Ring, at 1334 hours Mountain Standard Time, they would finally get their hands on a walking talking, human intersect. It didn't even matter if they killed him. Just having the brain to dissect would be worth billions in research & development. Their scientists might even be able to recover some of the data if his team could get the body to a lab quickly enough. The thought gave him pause, and Vincent keyed his microphone so that all him men would hear it. "No headshots. If you have to take Carmichael down, aim low. We need that brain of his intact."

The wait was making him impatient. Impatient people make mistakes, and mistakes were unprofessional, so he ground his teeth and waited while his randomly hand-picked advance man undressed and quickly donned the stolen uniform. "What is taking so long back there." He finally demanded.

"The shoes don't fit."

"Forget the shoes, just put your boots back on. Nobody looks at shoes."

At last, the man let himself out of the van, walked across the street and up the sidewalk. The disguised commando walked through the yard, really more of a rock-and-cactus garden, and rang the bell.

"No answer."

"Do I really need to spell it our for you?"

"No sir. I'm ringing again." Another lengthy pause. "I hear him coming."

Vincent stared intently through his binoculars. This was it. The man who'd taken his legs. Revenge was unprofessional. The door was opening. This was business, he reminded himself. "It's him. Go, go, go. Take him."

***

Chuck blinked out of the flash, cut it short, something he'd figured out how to do when he kept flashing on people in the photographs on Casey's walls all those months ago in Burbank. He saw the 'Ring Agent' flag come up in bright, bold, blood-red lettering over the man's file, and blinked. That was all he needed to know. The second flash was one he needed, and it only took a second. But that was almost too much, even when it gave him close quarters gun disabling and disarming techniques.

The Ring agent in the Electric Company uniform already had his gun out of its holster and coming up when Chuck could move again. He sidestepped and seized the man's wrist with his left hand, pushing it to his right, across the man's body, out of line with Chuck's vital areas, and also away from the side of the house Sarah was in. A quick knuckle strike just below the sternum had the Ring agent gasping for air and Chuck spun side-on to the man to lend weight to the elbow chop to the side of his neck. Before the man could fall, Chuck took control of the agent's weapon, fingers pinching the nerve ending inside his elbow hard to make him loosen his grip.

"Sarah, Ring agents incoming!" He shouted, spotting five men in combat gear running across the harshly sunlit street. A heat haze wavered in the air, and for a split-second he could almost imagine they were part of the mirage. Chuck fell to one knee, hands coming together on the grip in proper fashion, and sighted in.

There was no time to think, only to act, and Chuck wasn't going down without a fight. He squeezed off a round, then another, then a third, each bark of the pistol accompanying a shot taking one of the approaching commandos square in the chest. They staggered with the impacts but kept coming. Kevlar, damn.

Two of the black-clad men stopped, taking up similar firing stances to Chuck's. He rolled backward and kicked the door closed with one foot. Their weapons were silenced, but he could hear the mechanical chatter of their automatic weapons cycling, the impact of their bullets with the door. He thanked Sarah for being paranoid enough to insist on the ballistic Kevlar insert between two layers of quarter-inch steel that made up their front door. The bullets made a pleasant pinging sound as they hit the door harmlessly. Though the cactus on the front patio was probably done for.

Pounding footsteps alerted him just soon enough to make a difference. The door itself may have been reinforced, but the frame was standard, something Sarah often griped about. It would have drawn attention to reinforce the frame. Cops inevitably made the 'drug dealer's stash house' assumption, when they noticed reinforced door-frames, so they'd done without.

Chuck scrambled to his feet and darted to the left, threw open the closet and slipped inside. "Flashbangs, flashbangs." He whispered fervently. "Where'd I put the flashbangs?" The box fell off the top shelf, and it was raining flashbangs. The first Ring agent shoulder blocked the front door and the frame came apart, sending whirling splinters into the room. Chuck bobbled one for a moment before pulling the pin and tossing it out of the closet. He scooped up another pair from the floor, one in each hand, tossing them all in quick succession. He closed the door behind them and stuffed a spare in his jeans pocket. After the third bang, he shoved the door open and leaped out.

Thankfully they were all still woozy from the grenades, because one was actually pointing his gun directly at Chuck's midsection when he came out of the closet. The flash still fresh in his mind, Chuck slapped the barrel of the man's assault rifle down and away, sidestepped left and tugged on the man's arm, spinning him around.

One hand swept around the agent's neck in a choke, and Chuck put his hand over the agent's on the grip of his assault rifle. He sprayed wildly in the hopes of downing even one of the agents. The chatter of silenced weapons was thick in the air. It wasn't loud, but there was no mistaking the sound of automatic weapons cycling for anything good.

The agent in Chuck's grasp jerked from multiple impacts, but Chuck held the man up, using the wounded and probably dying man as a human shield. He felt around on the man's chest for a moment, found the telltale shape of multiple grenades. There was no way to see what kind, but he hoped stun grenades or concussion grenades.

With a quick peek around his shield to see where they were bunched up, he pulled the pins, shoved his captive at them, and dove over the little stucco half-wall into the living room. He forgot to stick his fingers in his ears, and the blast hurt. He could feel blood running down the side of head closest to the blast. Must have been frags. "Sarah!" Chuck shouted at the top of his lungs. "We have to go! Get to the car and let's get out of here!"

"I'm a little busy here, babe!" Sarah shouted back, and he heard the whip-crack of her Remington 900 bolt action hunting rifle.

***

Out in his command van, Vincent heard it as well.

"Team One," He said. "What is your status. Team one, report. Damn. Team two, report." The radio crackled instantly. "Sniper took down one—" Vincent heard the second gunshot echo over the radio a barely noticeable fraction of a second after it first rang out. "Make that two of us! We're pinned down. No visual on the shooter."

"It sounds like a bolt action, rush them. There's still four of you." Damn it all to hell. This was a disaster in the making. His superiors had given him the position of command, told him to pick the team he needed to capture or kill two agents, taken unaware and potentially unarmed. Conventional wisdom said a six man team —with two more in the van to drive and offer surveillance backup— would be more than enough. Most true professionals would have taken that number and doubled it and come in from two directions, just to be sure. Vincent wasn't most professionals. "Team three, halt overwatch. You're needed here." He'd tripled it.

***

Chuck went over to the smoking pile of bad guys and fished out one of their assault rifles. There was less blood than he'd been darkly expecting, and a couple of them were groaning. So, maybe only two or three deaths on his conscience. There was another echoing gunshot from the back bedroom. They'd come from both sides, there was no window from there facing the front of the house, so that was the only explanation.

Chuck quick-timed it to the sliding glass doors out onto the back patio from the living room. The glass had shattered, and shards of it crunched under his feet as he slipped around the back of the house, stolen assault rifle at the ready.

Three men in black combat fatigues just like the first team were charging at the windows of the master bedroom. Chuck fired from cover, pressed against the back wall of the house in the shadows, low, to take out their legs. Some part of him just couldn't stomach the thought of killing. They fell like cut barley, and the sharp bark of Sarah's rifle split the air again, and a fourth man lost his head. Chuck tossed his spare flashbang, and it hit one of the wounded agents in the head, bounced up into the air and exploded. That close, it knocked both men out for the count.

He circled back around, into the living room. Sarah was shuffling down the hallway to him, her rifle in one hand and her silenced Smith & Wesson 9mm in the other. "Now we can go." She said simply, and made her way to the garage. "Nice work with the flashbangs, honey."

Chuck scampered after her, got in the car and started it. "What are you waiting for? Come on."

"I need to make sure we're clear." She said, and knocked out one of the teeny little windows in the garage door, rested her rifle barrel on the hole she'd made and sighted out.

***

Vincent glanced at his watch again. 1:39. Five minutes gone, and two teams disabled or killed. He had to hand it to Carmichael and the Blonde they were the CIA's best. However, if team three got there in time, he could maybe still salvage this debacle. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, the flare of sunlight off something. A rifle scope!

He ducked, slumped in his seat and the window shattered. His driver fell forward in a cloud of red just as the gunshot echoed through the canyon. Vincent snatched his pistol and fired out the window blindly, only hoping to keep the sniper's head down. He emptied the clip at a leisurely pace, clicking off the rounds one every second or so, as his free hand searched for his driver's M-4 carbine, which should be slung between the seats right. Yes. There it was. He kept up the stream of fire, buying time for Team three to arrive.

***

"Sarah get in!" Chuck shouted from the car, dumping his borrowed assault rifle on the dashboard. Sarah was huddled in the corner of the garage, and bullet holes were appearing in the garage door.

"One shooter, white van across the street." Sarah shouted back. "Keep your head down and go baby! Go!"

"Not without you!"

"I'm pinned down! Go dammit!" She glared at him. "I'm not asking, I'm telling! Go take him out!" With a wince, she put her hand to her side. Damn cramps.

Something clicked into place in his mind. Those weren't cramps. Those were contractions. About five minutes apart, was that right? The baby couldn't have picked a better time? He stomped on the gas, launching the car backward, through the garage door. Bullets kept peppering the car, but he had his head down, looking straight up to see the rearview mirror, angled down.

A figure in black combat fatigues rose up behind the car, and disappeared. The car jerked and shuddered and bounced as the Ring agent fell under the wheels. Chuck winced a little in sympathy and floored the accelerator. The remains of the garage door sloughed off, pinwheeling in the middle of the driveway. Chuck centered the white van in his mirror and curled up in a ball, braced for impact.

Vincent saw it coming, and he grabbed the wheel, shifted the van into reverse and wedged the dead man's foot onto the gas. The van jerked backward maybe a dozen yards. He popped his head back up, shifted gears, crushed the dead man's foot back onto the pedal.

Chuck's car hit the curb and bounced up onto the sidewalk, crumpling the safety railing. The impact jostled him around a little, but he was alert and unharmed. He glanced out the back. No sign of the van, what had... Chuck blinked, and tried to remember if their car had side-curtain air bags.

The van plowed into Chuck's car and the sedan jumped with the sound of squealing metal as it's back bumper bent the safety railing further. Vincent leaned the dead man's foot harder on the gas. Tires squealed and the van shimmied sideways, pushing Chuck's car around against the maimed railing. A support snapped and the car shifted a little further.

There was a steep embankment beyond the railing. The man was trying to knock his car down it, Chuck realized. He pulled the pistol from the small of his back and aimed it out his shattered window, really seeing who it was driving for the first time. His mouth dropped open for a moment, but he fired anyway. How many lives did this jerk have? Vincent ducked back down behind the dashboard.

Chuck's pistol came up empty, and he glared at it then threw it out the window at Vincent. It added yet another crack to the windshield, but that was all.

Vincent's head popped back up, smirking. And then they both heard the rotor. Vincent grinned wider, eyes darting up to watch the chopper's progress. Chuck spotted the chopper through his sunroof for a second. "Good to see you made the party, team three." Vincent said into his microphone. Concentrate on the house. I'll deal with the car."

Chuck could only make out a few of the words, but merely from Vincent's tone of voice, he knew it was the wrong kind of reinforcements. The van reversed away, and Chuck grabbed the assault rifle from where it had flown in the initial crash and pumped bullets into the van's hood until the magazine came up empty. Smoke started pouring from the engine of the van, but it hardly slowed, crashing back into the side of the car. Chuck's side of the car crumpled, and he wriggled across into the passenger seat, tucking his legs up by his chest, trying to get them as far as possible from the crushing force of the van.

The car started to tilt up on two wheels as Vincent's van drove the car harder against the safety railing.

***

Sarah heard the helicopter before anyone else. She wasn't in a great position, but she grabbed a golf club they'd never gotten around to using and levered it against the wall of their garage to knock over the giant tool cabinet they'd also never used. With a sigh, she sat herself down, glaring through the scope at the approaching Huey. She'd need a more secure firing platform.

The angle was off, even from her lower position, and she didn't have a shot on the pilot until the helicopter was close enough she couldn't risk it crashing on Chuck. As more ring agents started to zipline down, she zeroed in on what looked like a team leader, and put a round in his throat.

Her bolt action rifle was intended for use on big game animals, moose, bear, the occasional mountain lion. The light body armor worn by the rappelling team was no match. The range was under fifty yards, and Sarah barely needed to bother with the scope. The action made the click-clack sound that sometimes haunted her dreams, but she chambered a new round and took aim again.

The van was about to push Chuck's car over the embankment. She had to do something, even if it risked a helicopter crash. Sarah shifted aim and fired. The helicopter jerked sideways, toward the house, and as she worked the bolt to feed another round, she had a shot at the pilot. Two of the zip-lining ring agents lost their grip and fell forty or fifty feet to the ground with bonecrunching thuds. Her belly was a pit of ice as she glanced through the scope and held her breath. The recoil stole her breath for a moment. The pilot slumped over on the yoke and the helicopter banked over directly for the house, a couple of agents still clinging to their ziplines. Sarah realized as the chopper disappeared from sight over the top opening of the garage door, that she was sitting in a puddle. Her water had just broken.

***

Vincent and Chuck watched helplessly as the chopper's rotor cut into the roof, as the huge machine slammed into the house. "Sarah!" Chuck shouted. Vincent held one hand to the sucking chest wound that Carmichael had given him, a lucky shot that had penetrated through the van's hood, engine compartment and dash. He leaned sideways, his weight pushing his dead driver's foot down harder on the gas pedal. A last support beam snapped and the mangled vehicles lurched forward, over the edge. The van caught on one of the broken off support columns, and metal shrieked, but the cars stated linked, making a funny T-shaped tangle of metal.

Chuck's car angled down crazily and he fell backward, the door flew open and chuck managed to hook an arm through the window, hanging over a twenty foot drop. He punched the glove box open with his free hand, scrabbling for the spare gun Sarah kept there.

Vincent broke the windshield out with his fist and hauled himself out on the hood, so he could speak to Carmichael directly. The man deserved that much.

He was not expecting more gunfire, and a bullet shattered his wrist. Another grazed his shoulder, a third punched him in the stomach. The others missed. He coughed and looked down at Carmichael hanging from the car door, empty pistol still in hand, and said, with well earned respect. "Well played, Agent Carmichael. But today, everybody loses."

With his good hand, Vincent pulled out the detonator for the twenty pounds of semtex strapped to the floorboards of his van.

"_You_ lose, Carmichael." Vincent said, popping off the safety cover over the detonator switch.

Chucks eyes widened in horror and he let go, falling twenty feet from their ruined family sedan. He rolled with the impact and tumbled down the embankment as the world went white.

TO BE CONTINUED...

A/N 2: I remember I said: all Chuck POV last time, but things got a little more hectic this chapter than I had anticipated, and I needed the freedom. Also, I didn't mean to end on a double cliffhanger, but this chapter was past 5000 words already, so I had to split it somewhere.

I'm going to try to put up a poll on whether the story needs to stay M or can safely move down to T. Also. Over 1200 hits!


	5. Chapter 5: Down in the Hole

A/N: This chapter catches us up to the first two Chapters. The mystery of how Chuck and Sarah got to be living off the grid in Arizona in the first place is probably going to be a separate story. This is because the flashback didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, and I don't want to confuse anyone more than is strictly necessary or interrupt the flow of the story going forward any more than I have to.

/Ramble mode: off.

Disclaimer: Don't own anything but the clothes on my back.

Chapter 5: Down in the Hole

Sarah felt her heart drop into her stomach as the van disappeared in a raging fireball. "Chuck." She whispered. "Chuck!" Sarah hauled herself up, rifle forgotten, and started forward down the driveway. The sound of police sirens in the distance barely registered, and she staggered into the street, tears streaming down her face. She couldn't do this alone. "Chuck! Don't you dare be dead!"

Two patrol cars screeched to a halt, swerving side on to her across the street, and uniformed police officers burst out. They took up cover positions behind wheel wells, guns drawn.

"Drop the gun lady!" One shouted. "Police! Drop the gun! We _will_ shoot you."

She barely heard them. Her gun fell from nerveless fingers and she stood woodenly, staring at the smoking wreckage by the bent and broken guard rail. She was lost.

***

Five hours earlier.

Ft. Meade

Casey was furious. Of course, this wasn't all that different from his base, normal emotional state. But this time, he had someone he could hit if it came to it, who didn't have a supercomputer in his brain. "Okay. Explain that to me again, and try to lose some of the nerd-speak."

Jones shrugged, and turned the monitor to face Casey. Like that could explain anything. Casey hated the CIA puke. Why, by Reagan, didn't they make the hippie cut his hair and shave his beard? It was like they were trying to piss him off, teaming him with this man. "The ring knows where Chuck is hiding. Or they'll know soon. Whoever this hacker is of their's is, he's amazing."

"Better than you? Maybe I should trade up." Casey put in.

"He's a traitor. I'm not, maybe put that into your thinking hat. But, then again, he _is_ better than me, barely. He think's he's better than he is though." Jones swiveled his monitor back. "Colonel, I don't have a time frame for you, but I should have the location shortly."

Casey grunted. "How so? I thought you couldn't track down Bartowski's data feed to its origin point."

"I can't, I..." He paused for a second.

"Spit it out, Jones."

"I taught Chuck that hack he's using, back at Stanford. He's modified it with some stuff I've never seen before that he must have written himself, but this hacker who was pirating that last teleconference? He wasn't using proper protection."

"What the hell are you talking about? Spill."

"The best way to describe it to, someone such as you, Colonel Casey." Jones said with only the tiniest hint of a smirk. "Is that... well, I gave his computer an STD. When he broke into the datastream, a counter-virus installed a key logger into his computer. Its a tiny program, but most hackers know every process going on their computer, so it piggybacks on a necessary section of the host operating system and logs every keystroke, and then it waits. The next time the computer accesses the internet, it hides the back-transmission in the kind of standard internet packets that get sent every time a connection is made with a server. It sends the results back here to us one bit at a time to escape detection, by whatever countermeasures this guy has. When he sends the Ring the location, we'll get a report of exactly what the hacker did in order to break Chuck's location security, then I can use the key logs to duplicate his method and get you the location and you can go in and extract Chuck and S—Agent walker."

Casey arched an eyebrow at Jones' slip-up. How did he know Sarah? Casey knew about Jones going to school with Bartowski and Larkin, but had they been in contact somehow before Walker and Bartowski went off-grid? A thought struck him and Casey growled. Or had they been in contact _after _the lovebirds went off the grid? Wouldn't put it past the Moron or his hippie hacker homeboy. "How long will it take to do the number crunching once the signal's sent?"

"Not long. Whoever this guy is, his rig is good. But give me a few minutes to figure out the program shortcuts he's using, then ten minutes dedicated access on one of the big Cray supercomputers down in the basement, and I can reproduce ten _hours_ of work on this guy's part."

"That's fifteen minutes head-start the ring will have on us then?"

"Something like that. Maybe more, if they have assets staged closer than we do. I know you might not believe this, but field ops are not _really_ my area of expertise."

Casey gave an amused grunt, the closest he'd ever come to acknowledging anything Bartowski or his Stanford buddies ever said as humorous. "Call me as soon as you have the location."

"Where are you going?"

"Hitch a ride in an F-22." Casey turned to leave Jones to his dimly lit computer-hovel.

"We don't even have a location yet!" The CIA's best hacker shouted after him.

Casey grunted. "That's what satellite phones are for, Moron!"

***

Twenty two minutes late to the firefight:

The big MH-47 helicopter hunkered down over Main Street like a hunting cat on a fresh kill. Before it even touched down, marines in full combat gear jumped out into the blazing early afternoon sunlight. He grunted. Of course this had to happen just in time to ruin his Fourth of July Weekend. It was at least a hundred degrees in the shade, perfect barbecue weather. A second Chinook landed down the block, and a third the same distance in the other direction. Two AH-1W Supercobra attack helicopters orbited the scene providing support and surveillance, and if necessary, Hellfire missiles.

"Move it! Move it! Get me the officer in charge!" Casey's voice boomed in the dry air. "And somebody set up a proper goddamn perimeter!"

A few minutes later, out of the mass of milling, confused police and emergency responders, came two marines escorting a graying man in a Sheriff's department uniform. "Who the hell are you people, and what are you doing to my crime scene?" Sheriff Buchanan demanded.

The marine escort ignored the man entirely. "Colonel, we have the officer in charge as ordered, Sir."

"I'm sorry, Sheriff. This is no longer a crime scene. It's an incident site. It's my incident site, and I'm going to have to ask you and your men to clear out. We'll be taking any prisoners you may have taken as well."

"The hell you will!" The Sherrif said. "I've got more than a dozen bodies in that house! I'm not leaving until we get to the bottom of this."

"Sheriff, I'm not an unreasonable man." Casey said. One of the marines' eyes widened at that bald-faced lie. "But you really need to look at it from my perspective. You've got a couple dozen police. I've got a full company of Marine Force Recon maniacs, and a couple attack helicopters. Don't get in a pissing contest with me I'm not in the mood. I will fit you and your men for zip-ties and hoods if you make it necessary. I don't care if you have the attorney general on speed dial. Go right ahead. I want my people, I get my people. You don't have clearance to know why. There's two of them. A woman, blond, pregnant. And a man, tall skinny, curly hair, kind of a nerd."

"Ain't seen the man. But we got the girl over by the curb, she never mentioned this other fella."

Casey arched an eyebrow. "I need to talk to her." He paused a second to key his throat mic. "Support One, this is Six Actual, you see anyone down that embankment as we came in?"

His earpiece squawked. "Negative Six, just a wrecked car."

"Dammit." Casey growled. "Okay, Lieutenant Sanderson!"

A pimply faced marine ran forward. "Sir."

"Take first platoon and find that car wreck, find me my agent, and if he's not already dead and dies on your watch, take your platoon AWOL. You go off the grid and you never stick your head up again, or his wife will kill you all in your sleep. And then you'll have to deal with me." Casey said. "Move it!" He grunted in approval as the young officer went to do as ordered. "Alright Sheriff. Let's go."

The Sheriff led the way over to an ambulance. Casey frowned and they walked toward the back. "She wounded?"  
"Catatonic." The Sheriff said. "Most we can get out of her is a 'he's dead' and then she won't talk to you again."

"Jesus Walker, you're big as a house." Casey said, trying for a reaction. She was cuffed to a gurney in the back of the ambulance, face a mess from crying, though she seemed to have run out of tears. And she gave him nothing. Nothing, and that had been comedy gold. Her eyes stared vacantly for a moment.

"Not my name." She seemed startled that she'd spoken, rather than at his sudden appearance. "Casey? John. How'd you find us?"

"Where is he, Walker?" Casey said. "This is important, where's our boy?"

Tears leaked out the corners of her eyes. "Dead. John he's dead. He— he was in the car. The van." Casey glanced at the burned hulk of what could have been a van.

"Walker, calm down. You don't know that. I've got marines out looking."

"He's dead." She said, flat as a planed board. "He's dead and I— graaah!" She thrashed, jerking her hands against the restraints.

Casey grabbed an EMT's shirt and hauled him in close. "What's wrong, I thought she wasn't wounded."

"She's not." The paramedic said in a barely audible strangled voice. "She's not hurt, she's in labor."

The Colonel rounded on the Sheriff. "Why the hell isn't she on her way to the hospital? Somebody get me the keys to these cuffs."

"No." Sarah said. "Take me to prison. I don't care. He's dead and it's my fault."

Casey glared at her and poked her hard in the chest. "You don't get to shut down." He growled. "You took him off grid, yes. But he's a grown damn man. This _isn't_ your fault, and you don't even know for sure he's dead, and you've got a baby trying to get out of that boat your call a stomach, and by God you're going to snap out of this or I'll put him in the bunker myself."

Sarah lunged for him, but the cuffs held her in place. "I'll kill you!"

"There! Thank you. Welcome to the party, Agent Walker."

His earpiece screeched, and he put his hand to his ear, grinned at the news. "Status?"

"Oh god." Sarah whispered. "They found him. They found him?"

"He's fine Walker. Cut in his scalp, sprained ankle, but he's up and walking." Casey said. "I've got some guys with a van coming, protective detail for you, our own EMT's."

A man in a suit walked up. "Excuse me, Colonel Casey? I'm Agent Biers?"

"Speak of the devil and he shall appear." He turned his glare on the freshly starched NSA agent. "Take her to the hospital," His finger jabbed in Sarah's direction. "And make sure nothing happens to that baby. That's an order, Walker. Straight from the top."

Casey took the agent aside briefly. "Stay in contact. I want to be able to brief my agent once the baby's born." Casey grinned at the graying Sheriff. "Well. Looks like you can have your crime scene back." He keyed his radio. "Everybody rally to your LZs. We're wheels up in five minutes."

Exactly four minutes and fifty six seconds later the helicopters lifted off and angled over the Sonora mountains to the north west. One of the attack choppers swooped low over the wreckage that had been the Murtaugh residence so he could get a better look at the wrecked Huey poking out of the roof. Mostly he was showing off. Pilots.

Sheriff Buchanan and the responding officers glanced around in shock, stared after the swift-shrinking shapes on the horizon. If not for the fact that they'd all seen the same thing, they almost could have convinced themselves it was a hallucination, a mirage. That and the fact that their one potential witness had been spirited off as well.

***

Casey met Chuck at the helicopter, where two marines were helping him up the rear ramp. Casey grunted. He'd used up all the nice words with Walker.

"Is Sarah...?" Bartowski said.

"On her way to the hospital."

"Oh, god. Is she?"

Casey rolled his eyes. "She's only going to the hospital to deliver your unholy spawn, Moron. She's five by five otherwise, now she knows _you_'re okay."

Chuck nodded his thanks. "I hope you didn't feel like the fat kid again when we ran." Chuck managed. "Nothing personal." Casey grunted again, and Chuck recognized it as the 'begrudging thanks' grunt. It didn't have a number because it happened so rarely. They flew in silence for the majority of the ride after that.

As they made their approach to an airfield a little less than two hours later, Chuck finally spoke up.

"So I suppose now they're going to throw me in that bunker you always taunted me about?"

"Relax, we just need to get you to a secure safehouse somewhere until we can figure out how compromised we are." Casey said. "I've got a six man team with Walker, just to be safe, but you're the objective. You have my word. No bunker."

"If you say so. Can you at least tell me where we are?" Chuck asked, trying to lean on Casey as they walked down the cargo ramp. As soon as they were clear of the rotor wash, the helicopter swooped upwards and away back to the east.

"Area 51." John said eventually.

"Okay Casey, very funny. You could have just said no."

"It's the closest airfield we could get to close on short notice so we'd hopefully stay off the Ring's radar." Casey explained. "Look, we're just here to hitch a ride to DC." The Colonel reluctantly let Bartowski lean on him while they walked across the tarmac. Poor bastard was wounded in combat and now the man was missing the birth of his child. If he tried to turn this into a hug, though. Intersect or no, he'd be eating a fist.

"See, look Bartowski." He said, pointing. "They've even got a G-V waiting for us." He waved one of the NSA agents over to take his burden. At the stairs into the business jet, one of the agents put a hand to Casey's chest.

"Sorry Colonel. Our orders, from General Beckman, are that you stay here for now."

"That's insane. I'm his protection detail."

"Not anymore, Colonel. You're reassigned. Beckman will debrief you when you get back to Fort Meade."

"Casey what's going on?" Chuck whined. At least that hadn't changed.

"That's what I'd like to know." Casey growled and took a step forward. The agent 'assisting' the nerd up the stairs jammed a taser in his back. The Colonel went for his M4. Just that quickly, there was a dart in Casey's neck. "Son of a bith..." Darkness took him.

***

Chuck woke up on a cot in a slightly dank bedroom. There was a bank of fluorescent lights overhead, casting the room in a harsh artificial light that made his head hurt worse. He had the mother of all hangovers, but he hadn't been drinking. He and Sarah had come to that agreement barely a week after they had discovered the pregnancy. Or, Sarah had come to the agreement, and he would have done anything she said not to have to deal with grumpy-Sarah. No beer was a small price to pay for domestic tranquility.

His mouth was dry, and tasted like rotten... something. He smacked his lips, trying to work moisture into his mouth, and looked around. His memories came back in fits and starts, flowing like water. Damn it, where was he. Where was Sarah? The room was furnished, not necessarily homey, but there was a small entertainment center with a decent tv, a shelf full of dvds. And lying next to it was an Xbox, still in the packaging.

There was a window. Green curtains with darker green stripes. Ugly as sin. Chuck stumbled out of the cot and over to the window, threw the curtains apart to get a glimpse of sun. The window was just a cut out. A shadowbox with another fluorescent in the top with a concrete slab where the glass should be. Of course. He rubbed his temple and tried the doors. He needed some aspirin. The first was locked. Of course. The second led to a small bathroom, with a shower. The shower curtain had blue and green polka dots. Whoever did their decorating, they were overpaid. The medicine cabinet was empty. Of course. There was a toothbrush and a tube of off-brand fluoride toothpaste laying on the sink.

Chuck snatched it and started brushing his teeth. He didn't hear the door over the sink, and the first inkling he had that he wasn't alone was when a man cleared his throat behind him. "Excuse me, Agent Carmichael. There's a video conference we need you to attend."

Chuck jumped a foot in the air, nearly choked on the toothbrush. He spit into the sink. "Great." Chuck said with a palpable lack of enthusiasm. "You have some Advil? Tylenol. I've got a killer headache."

"Sorry about that." The man said. "Those NSA boys really don't bother worrying about aftereffects when they mix up the good tranqs."

He quirked an eyebrow. The accent was odd, and he couldn't quite figure out where it was from. Not british, not australian, something else. He gave it up as a bad use of his time. "How long have I been out? Last I remember is the taser in the back."

The man--he was wearing a uniform of some kind, army maybe--seemed to think about that. "You've been asleep for thirty six hours. I don't know about anything beyond that. All I'm cleared to know is your name, Agent Carmichael."

"Call me Chuck."

"Frank."

"Whatever. We going to go do this video conference?" Chuck asked.

"You need to put on these. Chuck. Purely precautionary, I promise." Frank said.

Chuck laughed. "I can already tell this is going to be a thing with you. Do I really need to wear the leg irons?"

"Protocol." Frank said with a shrug.

"Of _course_ it is." Chuck said, and shook his head. This had Beckman written all over it.

***

It was maybe fifty yards down the corridor to the conference room, but it took what seemed like forever because of the waddling, shuffling gait the leg irons forced Chuck into. Finally, they had him sitting in front of the plasma screen. It felt a little like it had in Castle the last time he'd been there, almost nine months earlier. He was a little fuzzy on the day, so it might have been more than nine now.

The screen lit up, showing Beckman and her ever-present scowl. "Good morning Agent Carmichael. I'm sorry about the accommodations."

"I only found one or two glaring absences." Chuck said.

Beckman's frown deepened. "We made every effort. What's missing, Agent Carmichael."

"My wife. And my daughter."

Something flickered over the General's face. Chuck couldn't quite figure out what. "I'm sorry Agent Carmichael. But I can't do that."

"Then I'm sorry." He glanced at the two guards. "I'm done." Chuck tapped the side of his head. "You bring me Sarah or you might as well be trying to debrief a corpse."

"Chuck, I am sorry. Truly I am." Beckman said. "I didn't want to tell you this way. I can't bring Sarah there to you. Or the baby, either one. They're dead."

"What? No." He cocked his head to one side then, studying her face. "Casey had a team there, to protect her."

"It wasn't the Ring, Chuck. It wasn't-- she died giving birth. The cord got wrapped around her neck and... The doctors couldn't save either of them. I'm sorry."

The guard whose name Chuck couldn't remember put a hand on his shoulder, consoling. Trying to anyway. Chuck looked down at his feet, back at Beckman. He closed his eyes, tried not to see the pain etched into the General's usually taciturn features.

"Liar." He said after the flash subsided. Beckman's eyes on the plasma screen widened.

"Chuck don't--" But he was already moving. His hands darted up and snatched the guard's wrist, twisted and yanked it forward. The guard grunted when Chuck's elbow thumped into his chest just below the sternum. The man was only doing his job, and Chuck wasn't really looking to hurt him, but the bunker guard was fairly burly, and probably had thirty or forty pounds on him. Chuck elbowed him again, then grabbed the extendable baton from the man's belt, flicked it open and whipped it back up over his left shoulder, cracking the guard's skull. The roll across the table caught the second guard staring with his mouth hanging open.

He popped the second man in the wrist, knocked the baton out of his hand, then swiped down and took him in the back of the knee, before clocking him in the head as well. Chuck turned back to the video conference, where Beckman still had her mouth open stupidly. "Chuck this won't do anything. Please calm down and think--" It took him half a dozen shuffling steps to get close enough to smash the TV, webcam and all.

Well. That had certainly felt good. But now what? Chuck stooped over the first guard and found the keys to his restraints, unlocked himself and availed himself of the man's sidearm and id badge. There was a magnetic strip and a barcode, so it probably served as a security pass as well. He'd need that if he was going to escape. Sarah couldn't be dead, and so, he had to get out of this place, wherever it was, in order to get to her and prove it to himself, as much as to Beckman. No time to steal the guard's uniform. The General was no doubt over her shock now, and making phone calls to get the bunker locked down. His window was closing.

Chuck swiped the keycard in the lock. Nothing. He tried it the other way, and the door clicked and he slipped back into the corridor. Left would take him back to his room, so he took a right. Every twenty yards or so, there was a door for something, more cells, a few of them looked like, or storage. At the third door, he paused and glanced at the plaque next to the door. The flash flickered through him roughly, and his headache from being tranquilized earlier only made it worse. His knees buckled and he almost went down before he could stiffen his legs.

The whole layout of the base was percolating through his mind now, and he blinked the images away hastily. He only needed the route to the security station. Chuck had to use the unconscious guard's access card three more times before he found the security booth.

A guard stood when he shoved the door in, turning with his gun out and tracking upward, but Chuck cracked him on the wrist with his baton and he dropped the gun. Another gentle tap to the back of the neck, and Chuck had the room to himself. The monitors showed him where the guards were coming from, closing in on the conference room, and down the hallway toward him. He could hear the security man's radio crackling, and he could have kicked himself. He should have taken the first guard's radio, kept himself in the loop on the guards' movements.

They had him blocked. The corridor outside was filling with guards in either direction. Chuck growled under his breath, and smashed the interior security lock off with the butt of his pistol. That left two options. He scanned around, and the vent was barely eight inches across. That wasn't going to work this time. Instead, he clambered up on the security desk and punched out one of the ceiling tiles. He stuffed the gun in the back of his jeans and de-extended the baton before slipping it in his back pocket. It took him a good fifteen seconds of swinging from the hole in the ceiling and kicking his feet wildly before he got himself up there.

With the schematics of the bunker running through his mind, Chuck made his way through the interior spaces toward the access door to the upper levels. After a couple hundred yards of crawling, he slipped, fell through the foam insulation and landed with a thump on the hard concrete. His breath blasted out of his lungs by the impact, black spots dancing in front of his eyes, Chuck was in no condition to dodge the tranquilizer darts of the group of guards he had practically fallen on top of.

His last thought before magic sleepy time took him, was how ridiculous an ending it was to his one last gasp at freedom.

A/N 2: Next chapter should be up this weekend, then it's Spring break, so it'll be a while. In the words of Abraham Lincoln: Whooo! Spring Break!


	6. Chapter 6: Rude Awakenings

A/N: Fairly short chapter, for me anyway. Next update will be at least a week.

_Edit: Got some good feedback on this chapter, and I made a couple of edits. Nothing too major, but I think they make character motivations clearer._

Chapter 6: Rude Awakenings

One week later:

"Wake up..." A disembodied voice said softly. Diane rolled over, tried to go back to sleep.

"Wake up Diane." The voice said again. General Beckman came gradually to consciousness, still groggy from sleep.

"What's goin'on?" She grumbled. Sarah racked the action on her beretta.

"What do you think is going on, Diane?"

Beckman's eyes focused rapidly in the semi-dark of her bedroom. "Agent walker. Do you mind my asking how you got past my security?"

"Casey wasn't too happy you didn't keep him in the loop on the bunker situation. And I told him I wasn't going to hurt you."

"You're not?"

"No. That's just what I told him." Sarah said, shaking her head.

"I thought you'd have more sense than to try something like this. Agent Walker."

"It's Bartowski. How many times do I have to say it? Now, to business." Sarah said, suddenly pleasant and mannered. "Where are you hiding my husband?"

"I can't tell you that agent. He's in protective custody."

Sarah grunted, pulled the silencer from a pocket of her black hooded sweatshirt and screwed it onto the barrel of the Beretta she'd kept from that first NSA agent in Cottonwood Medical Center. She liked the symmetry. "If that's your final offer?"

"So, what's your plan? You're going to kill an NSA general? You think that will get you reinstated?"

"Talk to Deputy Director Myers. I was never declared rogue by my agency. Yours maybe, but I've always been CIA's golden child. They want us both as instructors at the Farm. _I_ want Chuck safe, with me, and our daughter. If it has to be on the run from the world, I hear Rio is nice this time of year, and it's not like I don't have the money. The Ring has you infiltrated, and their hackers are better than yours if they tracked our data link to the place in Clarkdale without Chuck or your tech people stopping them. I doubt your secure location is anything close to secure."

"What are you suggesting?"

"You need to move him somewhere no one knows about, even you. Right away, before the Ring can send a team after him. We'll work logistics later, so you don't lose your precious intersect. We're safe talking in here, by the way. I had to sweep for bugs in case this went badly. Wouldn't do to have my voice show up on the surveillance bugs when they found you tortured to death. You order the move, I intercept him in transit and we go off grid again."

"Why should I trust you with the asset?"

Sarah growled something under her breath, eyed the general angrily. Then she raised her left hand in the older woman's face, putting the diamond of her ring right where the general couldn't help but look at it. Then, she leaned to one side, turning her torso so Beckman could see her passenger. "I don't think you've met Lisa." Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "Or should I say Florence?" Beckman swallowed, even more nervous if that was possible. Sarah pressed on. "Wake up. If you think anyone is more invested in protecting your 'asset' than I am, then you're crazy."

"You brought your daughter along to torture and murder the head of the NSA?" Beckman said, genuinely shocked.

Sarah smiled, or at least showed her teeth. "Your home office is soundproof, for security reasons, and I brought the baby monitor. She'd never have heard a thing."

Beckman let out a very Casey-like grunt. "If we're as infiltrated as you think, the Ring will know the moment we try to move him as well. You think you're up to that, a full on firefight with who knows how many enemy agents, all with a baby in tow and no backup? You can't even be fully recovered from your pregnancy and labor yet."

Sarah grinned. "You'd be surprised. I've been highly motivated to come here and get Chuck's location out of you. This is actually going much better than I expected." She shrugged. "A little disappointing when I stop to think about it. I didn't even get to use the pliers on you."

Beckman shivered, and went on as if she could make herself believe that was a joke. "Its too big of a risk. If Chuck were being more cooperative, we could have him vet our people and get a secure transport set up."

"Why isn't chuck cooperating."

"We told him you and the baby died in childbirth. He was understandably upset."

Sarah leaned forward and put the tip of her silencer in Beckman's eye, flicking the safety off with her thumb.

"That was a mistake, general." She said, her voice calm and sure as she moved her finger from the along the slide and into the trigger guard.

"Yes." Beckman swallowed. "I'm aware of it Agent Walker."

"Bartowski, damn it!" Sarah managed not to shout, though her finger tightened on the trigger, dangerously close to slipping.

"What?"

"This is the last time I say it, Diane! I swear to god." She stuck the ring right in her face again. "It's Agent _Bartowski_. I'm not under any cover right now. I used my real name on the marriage license, so did Chuck. You know it and you keep calling me _Walker_. Legally, my last name has been Bartowski for the past 11 months. He is my husband and he's never seen his _daughter_ and you're attempting to keep me from him and I'm rapidly losing the last of my patience."

"Relax... Bartowski. I can... Maybe I could put you under cover at the bunker, commissioned as a Major in the Army, and get you on his protective detail. It'll be good to have someone to liase with him who he'll trust." Sarah stifled a shiver at her own interpretation of what 'liasing' with Chuck at the bunker would entail.

"How do I know I can trust you?" Sarah asked.

Beckman mulled that one over for a long time. Almost a full minute passed in ominous silence. "Well. Obviously, if I'm lying, you can get to me. Tonight proves that. But aside from that. You should know, this wasn't my go to plan anymore. Putting him away in a Bunker became necessary when he ran. He's much more effective in the field than moping in a hole in the ground. If you want to see him again, killing me won't do it. It'll take even you weeks to unravel the mess of red tape we've hidden him under, unless you join the Ring?" She paused, took in Sarah's reaction to that. Good. Not that far gone yet. "Take the deal, and I'll ship you out tomorrow if that's what you want. But you'll need a new name. If we're compromised, having chuck's known handler, or his wife for that matter show up on a duty roster anywhere will tip the Ring to chuck's location."

"And how do we know they don't know his location already."

"If they knew already Chuck would be dead. He isn't dead, so logically, they don't know. And Chuck would have mentioned flashing on a Ring agent in his protective detail."

"Unless you telling him we're dead made him suicidal." Sarah growled.

Beckman suddenly paled even further, if that was possible. "What's the likelihood of that?

"I don't know, unless you let me talk to him." Beckman shook her head. "And I know you won't let me talk to him. How do you expect me to assess his mental state? If it were me. And I thought I'd lost Chuck and Lisa both? Well, somebody would die. Probably a lot of somebodies. I don't know if I'd be on the list or not. Maybe, maybe not. I'm not sure I'd be able to make myself care as long as I got everyone on my list. But I'm sure you realized _that _earlier tonight. Anyway, we're going around in circles here, Beckman.

"_General_ Beckman, if you please Agent w-- ahem. Agent Bartowski. You're right. I don't see any other solution here. You want in that bunker or not?"

"Lisa comes with me."

"Fine it's a big facility, there's a small daycare for a few of the guards with young kids. You'll have to do something about your hair, probably color contacts as well. And do something about your height. You're far too recognizable as it is."

Sarah's fists tightened. She'd become used to carrying Lisa with her everywhere she went, never letting her out of her sight. That probably wasn't healthy, but they wouldn't be in the Bunker long if she had any say in the matter. "Give me a couple weeks. I want to run a background check or seven on whoever's running your daycare, and I haven't had much time to work on getting back in shape."

"Two weeks? That's it? Agent W-Bartowski, when will you sleep?"

"When I have Chuck back."

***

The door opened, suddenly and the burly guard slipped in with surprising grace for a man so large. Chuck grunted and rolled over to watch him. The man stood at-ease, hands behind his back.

"What's up?" Chuck said woodenly.

"You're being put on SP." The guard informed him. For the life of him, Chuck couldn't place the man's accent, or remember his name, or make himself much care on either front.

"What's that, some kind of drug? Truth serum or something to try and get me to talk?"

"No sir, Agent Carmichael. I'm not cleared to even know the name of your op, much less the details."

"Then what's SP?"

"Suicide Prevention."

Chuck let his eyes close. "Alright. And what does that entail?"

"Round the clock surveillance,"

Chuck scoffed. "What else is new."

The burly guard went on, ignoring the comment. "We're also going to have to remove anything you could use to hurt yourself. Cords, cables, belt, shoelaces, pens, pencils, everything."

"You can have my xbox when you pry it from my cold dead hands." Chuck said, only half joking.

"I thought you might say that." The burly guard again moved with surprising speed, whipping his hand around from behind his back. Chuck had no time to react before the dart hit him in the neck.

***

Two very horrible weeks passed. At least he thought so.

Chuck was beginning to lose all sense of time. The first day hadn't been too bad. The guards had moved him to another room while he was out. When he woke up, he was in a padded cell. Gone were the trappings of faux-normality that they'd left him before. Gone was the twin size bed with the box spring, the TV and the Xbox and the row of nearly new DVDs. Gone was the hole in the wall he'd drilled behind the dresser to tap into the bunker's intranet and get news from the outside world after his first escape attempt had gone south. There was no way to see if Sarah was still alive, if she'd responded to his private message on their emergency line of communication, their Newsarama account. There was no way to know if Beckman had been telling the truth about her death in childbirth.

The guards did have a small TV stuck up in the corner of the room near the ceiling that they would leave on CNN, so he knew current events, like that mattered. If Sarah had died it wouldn't make the news, if she had escaped custody and was trying to spring him, the NSA would keep it under wraps. If she had escaped and was recaptured or killed, again the NSA would keep it under wraps and he'd never know.

But, at the same time, 24hour news bleeds together. The anchors repeated themselves so often that Chuck got bored quickly. After the first day he realized there was no hope of escape. Even if he could turn his shirt into a noose, there was nothing to hang it from. SP standing for Suicide Prevention seemed a lot more akin to Suicide Promotion as far as Chuck was concerned. The only thing that really kept him from seriously considering something drastic was the thought that Sarah or Lisa, either one, was still alive. If Beckman had been telling the truth about Sarah, they would hold his daughter over his head only as a last gambit. If she'd made it. Sarah had been a couple weeks from full term when the Ring had stormed the house in Clarkdale, but his sister was a doctor for crying out loud, he knew just how little that would matter in an NSA facility, or even in a relatively up to date modern hospital.

The thought of NSA doctors taking care of his little girl almost made him punch the wall. But it was padded so it wouldn't be very satisfying unless he could break his knuckles. And he didn't want to give them the satisfaction.

The only thing that really let him know what time it was, once CNN started to bleed into itself —his meals— seemed to come with increasing irregularity. At first he thought about scratching a mark in the wall for every day, but he didn't have anything to scratch with, and the walls were like couch cushions or something. His fingernails weren't up to the job. It was a few hours after the 42nd meal (he thought) had been shoved through the padded slot in the door, when the TV suddenly went dark for a moment before crackling to life.

The face of burly guard with funny accent filled the screen. "Agent Carmichael, there's someone to see you. A new addition to the staff here, and they have your new orders. I'm going to open the door and we're going to walk to the meeting. I don't want to have to tranq you again, so I'd appreciate it if you'd put on the handcuffs and shackles." There was a series of metallic noises from the food slot. Chuck sighed, and put on the chains.

When the door grated open, chuck briefly considered launching himself at his captor. That's how he had started thinking of them, when he didn't stop to think about it rationally. He knew they were just trying to protect him, from himself, from whatever was left of Fulcrum, from the Ring, from terrorists. Yes, there were still terrorists out there trying to kill him who weren't part of shadow conspiracies. He knew they were just doing their jobs, that they didn't know what the NSA had taken from him, but he could only remember it every so often. Two weeks of Suicide Prevention had taken a toll on him. He'd lost weight, despite regular feedings. Burly guard with the funny accent barely got so much as a grunt, just a nod of the head to lead the way.

"I don't think so Carmichael. I don't feel like being strangled today. You know the way to the cafeteria. I'm sure you remember. I'll be several feet behind you. Out of range of your feet but close enough I won't miss with the tranqs if you cause trouble."

Chuck grunted. A number 7, Casey standard (cynical with a side of skepticism) and shuffled out of his cell and down the hall. It seemed like forever since they'd stuffed him in that hole. He scratched his beard. The days living in the relative luxury of the furnished part of the bunker seemed like a vague distant happy memory. The house in Clarkdale, watching Sarah balloon up with his daughter, rubbing shea butter into her stomach for the stretch marks... It was all fuzzy and indistinct like a fond memory from his childhood, trying to slide away into the fog even as he tried to hold on tighter to it.

"Aren't we going to the conference room?" Chuck asked.

"No, the Cafeteria. I thought you might like to eat with utensils for once." Chuck grunted something noncommittal, and the guard pointed the way to a utility stairwell, and they continued in relative quiet.

Chuck thought back to all those months playing will they won't they with Sarah, until they decided to go for it. The disappointment when he realized they still had to pretend not to be in a real relationship, the frustration of their decision not to consummate their marriage fully on their damn wedding night so they didn't risk getting found out, sleeping apart those two months before they finally slipped and had to run. He could barely remember those days, without concentrating.

His entire time with Sarah felt like a dream, and his uncertainty over her fate made it even worse. What was a meeting some new guard going to change?

When he walked into the cafeteria he stopped suddenly in his tracks.

The new guard was standing by one of the tables, talking to someone. The silhouette was frighteningly familiar. But she was maybe an inch or two short. Maybe she could do that with posture. Her hair was black, and curly. The nose was different, and he squinted... Her eyes were dark brown, not blue. He was just seeing things. It wasn't Sarah. Dammit, he was just seeing things.

Chuck sat down across from this new mystery woman.

"My name is Jill Ford, and I'm--"

"I have an unfortunate history with girls named Jill." Chuck cut her off.

The new Jill rolled her eyes in a heartwrenchingly familiar manner. "I'm aware of that Mr. Carmichael." Had she put a little bit of an odd inflection in that? He found himself listening intently to every word she said. She sounded a little bit like Sarah too, but there was something odd in her voice he couldn't pin down. Something tinny almost.

She pushed a folder across to him. The red bordered Top Secret folder was like every briefing he'd ever gotten. But there at the top was a stamp he hadn't seen before. Eyes Only Carmichael. Chuck palmed the paper clip as he opened the file. A post it note was stuck to the first page. He recognized the handwriting immediately.

_**I'm not dead. Promise. **_

_**Lisa's upstairs in daycare.**_

_**SB.**_

His eyes shot up to 'Jill's' and she winked at him. When she smiled there wasn't any doubt. He'd recognize that toothy grin anywhere. "You need a shave, Agent Carmichael." He grinned for the first time in what seemed like years.


	7. Chapter 7a: Bunker Blues

A/N: So I lied about it being at least a week between updates. Sue me. Got bored of grading papers and working on my thesis. This chapter ballooned way out of proportion to what actually takes place in it, so I decided to cut it in half, just for ease of reading. Double update.

Chapter 7a: Bunker Blues

Undisclosed Location:

"We lost twenty two out of twenty four men that we sent after Carmichael. Seven captured and fifteen killed, including Vincent. It was ill-advised sending him into harm's way. He was a valuable part of our team, and his life was literally _wasted_ on this mission."

"I disagree. He had extensive knowledge of Carmichael. More than any agent still with us, he had personal contact with this man. Everyone else who's ever spoken to him in our employ is either dead, presumed dead, or in Threatmax. We had no one else to send if we were to be successful."

"And yet we were not successful. So, how was it not a waste?"

"At any rate. We have his location once more." The man in the center of the table said. "And judging by the way he handled the strike, is there any longer any doubt that he is the new human intersect host?"

The man at the far end grunted. "No. Without a doubt. But this time, instead of being alone and isolated, he's in a secure, military, reinforced Bunker. And we only have one agent inside, who is in no position to effect the outcome of an assault. We would need both strategic surprise and tactical surprise to have any hope of retrieving Carmichael."

A woman halfway down from him spoke up. "The sheer logistics of mounting a raid on the place _do_ seem self-defeating. The time-window is too short. Even if we could get a large enough team into the Bunker. There is only a forty-five minute window before the HRT team out of Fort Hood will arrive from the initial alert."

"So, we'd need anti-aircraft support. Or at least attack helicopters. Also someone spoofing the radar array built into the rock above the Bunker. Should the effort fail we could lose almost our entire wetworks capability. It would take months, maybe years to build back up to where we are now."

The man in the center cleared his throat. "I may have a solution." He spoke to the man on the door. "Send him in." A tall, bald, well muscled man in his forties walked up into the spotlight in front of the conference table. "Thank you for coming Victor. You have our condolences on the loss of your brother."

The man shrugged. "He died as he lived. The satellite photos were conclusive. Vincent detonated his failsafe in a last ditch effort to complete his mission. I feel only pride in his professionalism."

"You said before, that you have a plan?"

"Yes sir. With your permission?" He took out a pointer and a screen lit up behind him showing a set of schematics. "I'll lay out my ideas for the assault on the Bunker."

***

Undisclosed Location 2: The Bunker

They didn't relax Chuck's Suicide Prevention status immediately. Burly guard and Coke Bottle glasses doctor wanted to be sure he wasn't faking it. Coke Bottle glasses doctor had a bunch of questions. They were mostly ridiculous, and he couldn't answer truthfully anyway. CBG doctor wasn't on the need to know list regarding Sarah's true identity. Nobody in the Bunker was, which was the root of most of his problems.

Even after they did let him back into his old room, it was worse than the Buymore days, worse than the days of their illicit relationship under all the different covers, of their secret marriage days. There was _nowhere_ in the bunker that wasn't under constant surveillance, and no one knew—could know—that Jill Ford was actually Sarah Bartowski/Carmichael. All Chuck wanted to do was hold hands with her, to give her a kiss on the cheek, the hand, _something_. He held no illusions about being able to satisfy the suddenly rekindled need he felt for his wife, as urgent as it was, not until they figured out how to get him out of here, and he certainly wasn't going to risk Sarah—or any of the other guards for that matter—catching him taking matters into his own hands on the surveillance feeds.

The closest they could come was letting their fingertips brush as they handed files across that damn table in the cafeteria, and even then they had to be careful not to let the fleeting touch run long, no sensual sliding their fingers along one another that had made nearly three years together yet apart if not bearable, then at least survivable.

Even that much was denied them. Every time she passed him a folder he thought of Barstow, of waking up with her playing with his fingers. Then his thoughts flashed forward a year, to their wedding night and Sarah grinning up at him saucily in the bathroom at the wedding chapel. Which was hardly an appropriate thing to be thinking about in the middle of the cafeteria. One hint on his face that he was thinking of something like that and everyone in the bunker would know _something_ was going on between them.

His wife was supposed to be dead, his daughter too. They'd had him on suicide watch for two weeks, and all of a sudden he starts playing handsy with her, making googly eyes at the new arrival? It would blow everything, and then the Ring would catch wind from some good natured guard talking to someone they were sure they could trust, it'd all get figured out, and they'd swoop in for the kill. He felt Beckman's claws in this whole awful situation somewhere.

She had always seemed somehow offended deep in her bones at the idea of Charles Irving Bartowski being physically intimate, with anyone, not just Sarah. Beckman probably still thought of him as Casey had at the beginning, the flesh covered robot. Likely, she thought Sarah was a Robo-sexual or something. Heh, he'd have to remember that one. Probably get a laugh out of Sarah, and that was about the extent of his ability to give his wife pleasure at the moment.

Chuck had briefly fantasized about claiming Beckman was part of the Ring, just to shake things up, to get a new General or Director or whoever on the monitor so he wouldn't have to deal with the Tiny Tyrant, but he knew he couldn't back up the lie, couldn't have convinced Sarah to go along with it. Well, okay, Sarah was a maybe on the get Beckman arrested for treason plan, as long as it got her laid. But Casey never would have gone for it. Casey. Where the hell was Casey in all this? He should ask Sarah at some point, but if they ever got any privacy, he'd have other priorities.

***

On Sarah's third day, one of the other guards approached her. "What the hell do you think you're doing, 'Jill?'"

"I don't... Excuse me?" Sarah glared back. "Who the hell are you to tell me how to do my job?"

"I'm Nancy." The shorter woman said. "I've been on this protective detail since he got here. And this is just sick." Sarah's eyes narrowed further if that was possible, maybe she was being paranoid, but. No, there it was, when she'd said 'he,' that little hitch in her voice. Damn him for his adorableness! It would be different if he only had that effect on her, his damn wife, but nooooo... And of course she was a brunette. Of course. Sarah ground her teeth and stuffed the little nugget of jealousy away into the dark corner of her mind and stamped on it. Or tried to.

"I don't know what you're talking about." She managed to say with a straight face, holding in all the rage by a thread. "I'm just trying to finish out my tour and then—"

"Look, I know you're not military." Nancy cut her off. "Obviously you're NSA or CIA or something, but that's no reason to do this to Agent Carmichael."

Sarah struggled not to punch the woman in the face. "I don't know what you're talking about." She said again. God she wished the woman would just drop it already.

"I saw a picture of his dead wife. Dye your hair and get some color contacts and you're her frigging twin, lady. Is that little girl up in daycare even yours, or just some orphan the CIA picked up to parade in front of a grieving widower so they can get what they need from him?"

"You obviously care about our protectee very much, and you obviously have no idea who you're talking to. So I'm not going to report you."

"Report me! For what!?"

"Interfering in CIA business." Sarah said. "You're right, of course. It's not my daughter up in daycare, it's his. That's Lisa Carmichael." The other woman gasped, obviously thrilled at the revelation.

"You breathe a word of that to him, or anyone else and I'll kill you and make it look like a suicide."

"What? W-why?"

"Orders. I don't care what you think. I have my orders. Now get the hell out of my sight."

That went well. She shouldn't have lost her temper. She shouldn't have told this Nancy any of that. There was no reason Chuck shouldn't know about Lisa, especially because she had already told him herself, but Sarah just wanted the oh-so-concerned pretty brunette as isolated from Chuck as she could manage in a hermetically sealed bunker.

Over the next couple days, Sarah took to watching Nancy on the security cameras when it was her turn in the booth, learning the woman's schedule so she could bump into her and ask for favors or give her bogus messages that would send her across the bunker when she was obviously on her way to go 'say hi' to chuck. It was pathetic and underhanded, but it let her feel a little better about the situation. Her talks with Chuck were the only bright spot, and even then, it was difficult getting him to really talk to her, open up emotionally, because of the cameras, his fear that their charade might collapse.

It was almost a full week since she'd been in the Bunker before she managed to convince the head honcho to let her have her meetings with Chuck in the conference room. They were still being watched, but at least they had some illusion of privacy. Sarah also had a brief naughty inkling of putting her foot in his lap. There were no cameras in the conference room that had a view of what was going on under that table. Sarah had checked. She'd had the urge before, back in Burbank, during a couple of briefings, but had always thought better of it. It was a foolish risk to take, but god she was feeling foolish lately. No. No, bad idea.

"Hey there good looking." She said as soon as the door shut behind her. Chuck frowned and she slapped his briefing folder down in front of him before taking a seat across the conference table from him.

"Uh. Shouldn't you be... more professional, Ms. Ford?"

"Relax, Chuck." Sarah said with a smile. "Nobody here is cleared for the full project, so the audio bugs are turned off. We can talk freely."

"The video is still running though, right? What if one of them can read lips?" Chuck said, then paused. "Maybe we could go upstairs, have a family picnic? You think the—whoever it is exactly who's in charge—would go for that?"

"I really don't think they would." Sarah said. "The OIC doesn't know I'm CIA, and Nancy has been bending his ear about my 'inappropriate' actions."

Chuck frowned sadly. "What inappropriate actions? Did you molest me while I was sleeping? I'm sorry I missed it. You should have woken me up so I could reciprocate."

Sarah shook her head fondly. "Sorry, but they have nightvision cameras too. I love you, Chuck, but I don't want to star in adult movies with you."

"I'm not exactly thrilled with that idea either." Chuck said. "That's why I thought... a picnic. Not even a dirty picnic. I could actually see Lisa and we could just sit out in the fresh air and feed each other finger sandwiches and be Chuck and Sarah again. Chuck and Sarah and Lisa, now, but still!"

"That sounds..." That sounded wonderful, is what that sounded. But it wasn't going to happen. Probably. That foot in the lap idea was really tempting right then. She shrugged, trying to keep the glimmer of hope from spreading like wildfire. Sarah popped her shoe off and tickled his ankle with her toes. "I'll run it up the flagpole, but don't get your hopes up. Security would be a nightmare." Chuck's face was contorted in an odd expression. Sarah ran her toe up into the opening of his pantleg, stroking his calf softly. "You finished with the dailies yet?" She said innocently.

"What?" Chuck said, startled from just enjoying the feeling of her touch. He blushed and tugged at his collar. "I uh... was distracted."

Sarah quirked an eyebrow and leaned forward, took her foot away. She pushed her breasts together a little so that they strained the dark fabric of her guard uniform. "Distracting you, am I? Well, you'd better get back to work, then. I need to get up to daycare soon and feed your daughter a truly staggering amount of breast milk."

"Our daughter."

"Yes, well. It'll be more than three hours since her last feeding by the time I get up there, so she's probably going to be cranky. When she's cranky, she's your daughter. When she's giggly and cuddly and sweet, that's when she's my daughter." Sarah said, toothy grin on display. "Deal?"

"How is that a good deal for me?" Chuck mumbled, and finally started flipping through the day's briefing to get out of a conversation he had no way of winning. "Is this everybody on staff here? Their files?"

"Hang on." Sarah glanced at her file folder. No. Two more days before we vet everybody, but everybody else is upstairs staff. You've gone through all of the staff with regular direct access to the protectees here. Everybody left, you haven't come in contact with them, so they shouldn't be able to ID you, but its still better to know one way or another if they're Ring agents or implicated in anything shady."

Chuck scanned each file as fast as he could. He flashed on some of the files, most really, but of those, no one came up flagged as a potential Ring agent. In almost all cases, the flash was like the one time he had flashed on Sarah, an especially interesting takedown or mission, deemed noteworthy by some nameless bureaucrat in the Science and Technology bureau of the CIA. He was getting the usual low-grade headache from repeated flashing a little bit earlier than usual, and debated asking for some painkillers.

Sarah already had the water glass ready and was spilling three advil into her hand before he looked up to ask for them. "Can I get—" He frowned. "How did you know?" He asked. She handed him the glass and then let her fingers graze along his while she placed the pills securely in his palm. It was more physical contact than they usually got out of that particular aspect of their ritual. Chuck grinned.

"Come on. You can't tell me you haven't caught me spying on you while you go over intelligence. This isn't Castle. I don't have anything else to do except watch you." Sarah grinned as well. "It's actually kind of my job at this point. Which, I've got to say... is a decent way to make a living. Getting paid to watching the one you love do paperwork." He moved to take her hand again, and she sighed and pulled away. "Chuck." She said in a warning tone. "I'm sorry. Okay?" She cut her eyes toward the cameras embedded in the ceiling. "I'll see about that picnic idea. Just try to concentrate on the work."

He frowned and knocked back the pills, and nodded. "You know what they say though. About all work and no play?"

Sarah let out a half-smirk. "This is working up to a 'Simpsons' reference, isn't it?"*

"Possibly." Chuck said. Sarah tossed her head to get hair out of her face, an intent expression on her face. "Yes. Okay fine. You caught me." She nodded to herself, satisfied, and leaned over to tap the folder again, trying to get him back on task. These sessions would probably take a lot less time if anyone else on the staff was cleared to know anything about Chuck so they could sit in. Sarah had to keep nudging him back to work, to stop him from trying to flirt with her.

Beckman had made the observation herself, but Sarah had pretended not to hear the General. She wasn't about to sacrifice the little time she got to spend with him in the name of efficiency. And she had missed being flirted with by someone who actually knew what he was doing. Although, Chuck didn't, really. With her, absolutely, he knew her too well sometimes, but a lot of the time he was still hopelessly clueless when it came to women, thank God. It was just so cute that he still tried, even though he'd been told in no uncertain terms that he'd won her heart. He still tried to make her smile every time he opened his mouth.

"Eureka!" Chuck exclaimed.

Sarah came out of her little daydream. "What is it. Did you find a Ring agent in the base?"

"Yeah. Well, no, not directly. He's Fulcrum, but potato potahto, right?"

"Could he have tipped off the Ring to your location?"

"I don't see how." Chuck said. "I mean, you were right, I've never come in contact with this guy."

"What does he do?" Sarah asked.

"Name's Gomez. He's the barber." Chuck explained. "Also, some kind of assassin."

Sarah smirked, in spite of the seriousness of the situation. "Aren't you glad I wouldn't let you cut off the sexy animal shapes now?"

***

Gomez clocked out as usual at 1730, and took the elevator up to the main blast doors. They only opened twice a day, at 0600 and at 1735, to allow non-residential personnel to come in and out. It was a security risk, but the emergency-shut rockets could slam the three-thousand-ton-door closed in seconds if it came to it. He'd told his superiors that, managed to smuggle out a copy of the schematics. He still didn't know why they were going to all this trouble, but he assumed an attack was coming. They'd asked for the guard change schedule for the next two weeks, but the logic of it all escaped him. And Fulcrum always had a plan.

He unlocked his car and got in, drove to his apartment. It took nearly an hour to get to the small town of Palestine, Texas, a little over thirty miles away. Gomez got out of his car, and his hair stood on end. Something was wrong. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something was wrong. He turned, scanning the parking lot, the fast food chain restaurant's sign across the street beckoned, but nothing was out of place.

But his instincts were usually good. Gomez shrugged it off and went around to open the trunk. But the trunk was already open. Someone must have been hiding in it! Gomez turned to retrieve his personal weapon from the glove box, and then he was staring down the barrel of a very large handgun.

"Hello there, traitor." The very large man behind the gun said.

"Don't kill me."

"Oh, I'm not going to kill you." The man said. "At least, not until we've had a very long discussion about the nature of right and wrong. Moral calculus, that sort of thing."

"What do you mean?"

"Put those on." The man growled, tossing him a zip tie. The gun never wavered. "Oh you know. If you could save a thousand innocent lives by torturing one guilty person would you do it, that's the kind of stuff we're going to discuss."

"Oh... okay." Gomez said. He pulled the zip tie tight around his wrists with his teeth. He was still reeling from the shock of the man appearing out of his trunk as if by magic.

"Answer's yes by the way. Hell, I come down closer to a one to one ratio on the whole scenario." The man said, then grunted. "How rude of me, didn't introduce myself. Name's John Casey. Now give me your keys. It's time we got to know each other a little better."

*Also a _The Shining _reference, but I prefer the Simpsons' take on it.

_Homer: All work and no play make Homer... something something..._

_Marge: Go crazy?_

_Homer: Don't mind if I do! (proceeds to go crazy)_


	8. Chapter 7b: Happy Anniversary

A/N: The second half of the chapter. Also, this is one of the parts I was worried about being M rated for suggestive themes, but I toned down the ending quite a bit. Also, I use the word definitely in this chapter. It seems like the first time I've seen it spelled correctly on the internet in months, and I had to do it myself. Not definately, not defiantly, but definitely. Just a pet peeve of mine, not directed at anyone.

/Rant mode: Off

Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck... So self-explanatory I sometimes forget to write it down.

Chapter 7b: Happy Anniversary

Two days later: The Bunker

Chuck was happy to see burly guard go, after he'd escorted him in, despite this meeting being back in the cafeteria. Something must have happened behind the scenes. He spotted Sarah across the large open space and sighed. He didn't think he'd ever get used to her as a brunette. The eyes were the worst part of it though. Chuck couldn't read her the same way he could with her regular eyes. There had been a couple of times since she'd showed up at the bunker when he'd obviously said something wrong, but he had trouble figuring out exactly what it was because he found himself reading body language instead of her eyes. Her face was easy enough to read this time though.

"So, that's a 'No' on the picnic then?" Chuck said.

"Yes. That's most definitely a 'No' on the picnic." Sarah grumbled as she sat down. "That's also a 'we got kicked out of the conference room.' There's only two cameras in there, and Nancy has them worried I'll loop the cameras so I can do god-knows-what to you."

"Can you do that?"

"What, loop the cameras? I'm working on it." Sarah explained.

"Then in the future we should definitely have these little chats in my room, with all the bugs turned off. I've got an extra cot you could use if we run late."

Sarah blushed. "Come on, Chuck. Eyes on the prize."

"Always." Chuck growled, giving her a brief taste of the Bartowski eyebrow dance. Sarah stifled a shudder as best she could, but the blush that stained her cheeks was another matter entirely.

"Chuck, please!" Sarah whispered harshly. "I'm still all jacked up from pregnancy hormones. I don't need you adding to the problem."

Chuck smirked. "What problem might that be, Mrs. Bartowski?"

Sarah pointed a finger at him accusingly. "Alright buster, if you can't be professional about this, I'm going up to daycare to feed Lisa. Have fun _debriefing_ yourself."

Chuck gave her his best sad, abandoned small animal eyes, and she sighed and didn't get up to leave right away. "You know what day it is today?"

"July 21st, why?"

Chuck's eyes widened. "I can't believe you forgot." He said, scandalized. "It's our one year wedding anniversary."

Sarah winced. "Sorry. I just... I always thought of the first night in Clarkdale as our anniversary. Maybe we should have two anniversaries?" She pulled her hand away when he tried to lace his fingers through hers.

"I hate this." Chuck said, letting the fake-sad expression fade, just a little, so that the longing for her could come through. "When can you spring me? When can we go home?"

Sarah's face fell. "It's complicated."

Chuck grinned a little at her choice of words. "Yeah, I bet." Which got him a brief snort of laughter. "How about you elaborate just a smidge?"

"Beckman wants to make certain we're still secure here, now that that Gomez guy is under wraps. Then we need to figure out how to get Charmichael off the grid for good and Bartowski back to LA."

"Back to LA?"

"Well, not permanently. But I want Ellie and Awesome to be Lisa's godparents. I think it's time 'Agent Charmichael' had an accident. Casey's off working on that now, and he says he's close, whatever that means. Good news is Gomez didn't really know anything, so we're moving up our timetable. But its also bad news. The Ring could be moving on this place soon, or they might not even know you're here. We just don't know, so we've got to move fast, once Casey gets back to me. We'll have to come up with a new cover name for you before we ship out to DC.

"To DC?"

"Stop just repeating everything I say and making it a question. Yes, DC. Well Langley, Virginia technically. But we just have to buy a house within commuting distance from CIA headquarters. There are some really good daycares and preschools in the area."

"Isn't that dangerous? I mean, won't we be a target?"

"Chuck. Listen to me. At Langley, there are so many black projects that one more isn't going to attract the least amount of attention, whereas in Burbank? We stuck out like a sore thumb. Why do you think Fulcrum or the Ring was there every second time we turned around? Coincidence? Nobody is going to bother with an analyst who only has secret clearance. And besides, there's more manpower in the DC area to call on in case anything does come up. JSOC is right around there too if we need heavy support."

"I thought I had top secret clearance."

"You do, but your cover won't. You're going to be the green shirt of the CIA, completely unremarkable as an analyst."

"So my cover is going to be that I'm CIA, and not good at my job?" Chuck said, hardly believing his ears. "You're making me the _Jeff_ of the CIA?"

Sarah could barely contain the grin that threatened at that thought, Jeff in the CIA. Then she shuddered at the thought of how quickly the country, and probably the world would be destroyed with Jeff as a CIA agent. "Yes exactly. No one would ever expect the Jeff of the CIA to be the human intersect."

"Okay, slightly off topic..." Chuck said. "When can you fix your hair back and lose the contacts? No offense, but I prefer you as a blond, and your eyes kind of give me the creeps when they're not their normal baby blue. Anniversary present?" He asked hopefully.

"Yeah, then what's with you and all the brunettes?" Sarah grumbled, pretending playfulness. Chuck cocked his head to one side.

"What all the brunettes?" Chuck said, frowning.

"Jill, Lou, Hannah, the check out girl at the S-mart in Clarkdale," Sarah said, ticking off fingers on her hand. "Oh, and that damn guard who's been making googly eyes at you ever since I've been here."

"Which guard, Frank? I think he's just pissed about the whole tried to kill him thing."

"You tried to kill one of your guards! Chuck what— Nice deflection by the way."

"That was my one escape attempt. And even with the kung-fu and everything, they eventually got a tranq in me. That was right after Beckman said you and Lisa had died. I guess I got a little crazy."

"This was before they put you on Suicide Prevention?"

"About a week before, yeah. I didn't get any response from you on our back up communications before they locked me in the padded cell."

"I'm so sorry about that, I wasn't really very rational those first few days before I broke into Beckman's house. I just sat around nursing Lisa and moping with my sister and trying to get back into shape. I forgot to check, and then Beckman insisted on Suicide Prevention. I was so worried about you I let slip you might be suicidal. Like I probably would have been in the same situation."

"That was you?"

"Well, I was just so mad at Beckman I said the first thing that popped into my head. I didn't think to check our back up communications until after I met with Beckman. Chuck, please don't be mad at me?"

"Why not, they do say angry sex is the best..."

"Chuck, we can't..." But Chuck just grinned, that sounded so much like her protests from back before they were married and still trying to hide their relationship. Sarah tried to still her racing heart. "One of the guards already thinks I'm trying to mess your mind up, make you think I'm your dead wife so I can get information out of you."

"You're right, this is complicated. Maybe I should tell this guard my wife isn't dead so we can have some alone time?"

"Don't you dare."

"Sorry. I just want you back in my bed where you belong." Chuck tried the eyebrow dance again, though it was probably too soon to be effective. She'd probably build up an immunity if he kept it up.

Sarah blushed and leaned forward. "If you don't stop doing that I'm going to mount you right in the middle of the cafeteria."

"As far as threats go, baby, I've heard a lot worse."

"I'll see what I can do about the surveillance." She bit her lower lip. "But don't get your hopes up. This place is worse than the Castle ever was with cameras, and damn nosy brunettes trying to poach on my damn territory."

"Did I ever tell you how sexy it is when you get jealous? Especially when there's no reason for it?"

"You're so naive." Sarah said. "Have you seen the way she looks at you?" Chuck just smirked and Sarah snarled under her breath. "Go back to your room and rest up agent Carmichael, you're going to need your strength. And wipe that grin off your face, before your damn brunette sees it."

"How is she _my_ brunette?" Chuck demanded, but Sarah just glared a heart-stopping smile at him over her shoulder and walked back to the security checkpoint.

Chuck had to sit there for a few minutes until he had all the blood back in his head.

"What was that about?" The burly guard asked, startling him.

"What?" Chuck stammered. "What, Frank?"

"You usually head right back to your room after talking to the Grinch. What's up?"

"The Grinch? Why do you call her the Grinch?"

"Oh, she just never smiles. Except around you." Frank shrugged. "She's getting kind of a weird reputation. She hasn't tried anything has she?"

"What, oh, uh... No."

"Good. Now what's up. Why're you sitting around in the cafeteria?"

"It's— Never mind... its nothing, just needed to think over some stuff." The Grinch. Sarah would hate that... But Chuck still had angry sex on the brain, even if she wasn't angry at _him_ per se... no. No thinking about angry sex with Sarah, no thinking about regular sex with Sarah. With the way his thoughts had been running lately that meant no thinking about Sarah at all. This whole thing was really turning him into a pervert, and the only solace that he had in any of it was that she was his wife, so technically, it wasn't _wrong_ of him to be thinking of her like that. But he still had to walk through a compound full of people before he got to his room, and explaining ..._that_ would be beyond embarrassing. Sarah'd probably think it was hilarious. Chuck shook his head and tapped the closed folder on the table. "Eyes only, you know that, buddy."

"Buddy. You tried to kill me!"

"Yeah, well. You _are_ keeping me locked up in a dungeon."

"CIA froot loop."

"Army meathead." Chuck waited a beat as they walked down the corridor. "My CIA contact thinks you have a crush on me."

"What!"

"Gotcha Frank."

"I hate you Carmichael."

"Please, everybody loves me."

***

Sarah sat in the security booth watching Chuck on the security feed as she looped and shut down all the other cameras. It shouldn't have felt so damn creepy. He was her husband, and he obviously knew she was watching, that must be why he'd left the shower curtain open, but still. At least he'd stopped giving the camera the smoky eye while he soaped his chest. She'd nearly lost control when he'd first started doing that, and Sarah really didn't think having a fellow guard walk in on her with her hand down her pants and her fingers up her babymaker was going to do anything at all to help the already tense atmosphere in the bunker.

Still, she found her hand creeping up to her breast. Even through her bra and uniform shirt, her nipples were sensitive enough that she bit her lower lip. The tender soreness had faded just like the doctor had said, but she was afraid sometimes that they would cut right through her shirt sometimes they got so hard.

Chuck was finished with his shower, and Sarah watched the water glisten on his chest hungrily. She even zoomed the camera in a little for a better look. When Chuck started to dry himself off in a more erotic than necessary fashion, she growled under her breath and squeezed her breasts with a groan.

"What the hell, Ford?" Nancy's voice came hard and sharp to her ears. Sarah's finger clicked the monitor off, disabling the last of the fourteen cameras she had to loop, and she turned guiltily to face her accuser. She hadn't heard the door lock beep before Nancy came barging in.

She racked her brain for a possible explanation. "I'm, just... making sure I'm still lactating."

"I thought Lisa wasn't yours."

"I'm still nursing her." Sarah shot back. "Unless you want the job."

Nancy eyed her suspiciously. "No thanks." The other woman said at last.

Sarah breathed an inward sigh of relief that she hadn't had to explain further, left it at that, and slunk out of the security booth. She closed the door behind her with a little more force than was strictly necessary. Nancy turned and sat down at the security station, and made a quick sweep through the monitors. All the cameras showed the same thing, Carmichael sitting on his bed reading a book, or the empty bathroom. A few didn't have very good angles, but his foot or an arm was always visible. Nancy cycled through slowly, drinking her coffee and opening her magazine. When she finished reading the Newsweek editorials, she flipped to the newly installed fifteenth camera and spewed coffee out her nose. Carmichael was wearing different clothes, his hair was wet from the shower, and then he was bounding toward the door. Nancy checked her watch. Six minutes had passed. Maybe enough time for a guy to have taken a shower. Maybe, but something was up.

She switched the main monitor over to the doorcam to follow his movement. But, it was still showing the same thing, him on his cot, reading that paperback. What the hell? He'd managed to loop them somehow. With a flick of her wrist, she switched the monitor wall back to the fifteenth camera. The cot was empty for a moment, before the uniform-clad shape of Jill Ford tackled him onto the bed, assaulting his face with her lips. Carmichael seemed to be trying to fend her off, with little success. Nancy started to reach for the phone, but. This was CIA sanctioned, probably. It was gross, but she couldn't report it, could she?

***

"Come on baby, I thought you liked brunettes."

"Hey! I never said that, you said that. You always say that."

"And you always have some brunette skank hanging all over you every time I look the other way for two seconds."

"What are you talking about?"

"That Nancy who's so 'concerned' I'm taking advantage of you. I've seen her making googly eyes at you."

"Googly eyes?" It sounded like something he'd say, and that made him grin.

"Don't laugh at me."

"I'm sorry, is my wife jealous of my non existent relationship with one of the guards at my secure bunker? Hey, hands, whoa! Cold hands... NO." Chuck seized her wrists and pulled them out of his pants. He scooted away from her down to the end of the bed, and sat up, trying to get some distance.

"No?" Sarah said, grinning in disbelief. "You're saying no to me?"

"I have it on good authority that my wife does not approve of brunettes getting physical with her husband. And you're all kinds of handsy lately."

"I think she'll get over it." Sarah purred while crawling on her hands and knees toward him along the bed.

"I don't, whoa! Do I need to get a spray bottle or something? No means no. I just got a very stern talking to about letting _brunettes_ near my unmentionables."

"Funny. But, I'm not playing around Chuck. This is your wife talking right now. I really don't want to have to break out my cuffs to get you to cooperate."

Chuck shivered at the thought of what Sarah might get up to if he let her near handcuffs anytime soon. "I don't see a ring on your finger."

Sarah rolled her eyes theatrically, pulled a chain out from under her shirt, with both engagement ring and wedding ring jingling from it. She shook them in his face. "Now get your sweet ass over here and take off your pants."

"I really do miss your blond hair, Sarah. And all kidding aside, I feel kind of weird about this. You remember that first night in Clarkdale when you were a redhead. I could barely perform."

Sarah scoffed. "You were exhausted, and yet I seem to remember us going for three or four encores anyway before you ambushed me in the shower." Sarah smirked and poked him in the chest. "Twice."

"And I made you dye your hair back the next day because I was feeling weird about it. You're the one who's always railing against the brunette conspiracy to steal me away from you, never thought I'd see you join them."

"Fine." Sarah leaped off him and started for the door.

"Where are you going?" Chuck groaned in disappointment.

"To the laundry for some bleach. Back in five." And she was out the door.

***

There was knocking at the door barely a minute later.

"That was less than five." Chuck said, opening the door.

"There was some hydrogen peroxide in the janitor's closet..." Sarah said.

"Is that really safe?" Chuck frowned.

"I know what I'm doing Chuck. They should have gone over this in spy school. You just have to get the proportions right. Oh that's right, you _failed_ spy school."

"You're going to pay for that, Mrs. Carmichael."

"Oh god, I hope so!" Sarah said, bending over the sink and waggling her butt at him. So of course he smacked it, she was irresistible. "Turn yourself back blond so I can carry you to the bed and do dirty things to you all night." It was four in the afternoon.

"As far as threats go, I've heard a hell of a lot worse, Baby." She grinned over her shoulder and dunked her hair into the water. The water quickly turned swirling grayish black, and her hair went back to something close to its original blond sheen. She squeezed as much of the water out as she could with her gloved hands, before peeling them off and tossing them aside. "Grab a towel, would you? I don't want to get my uniform all wet."

Chuck swooped in behind her and wrapped the towel around her head. "Contacts too?"

"Yeah, yeah." Sarah said, and clawed her contacts case out of a pocket. "Give me a second."

It actually took closer to a minute, but she eventually had them out, and the transformation was nearly complete. He kissed the side of her neck and wrapped his arms around her waist. She smelled like peroxide, which was different, but when he looked at them in the mirror, it was Sarah looking back, those blue eyes that had always been able to melt his heart staring into him.

The nose was still a little weird. "What did you do to your nose?"

She furrowed her brow for a moment. "What? Oh, I almost forgot." And she promptly took her nose off and placed it on the sink next to her contacts case. Chuck blinked in surprise. "Seriously? A rubber nose. Like in those kids' disguise glasses with the mustaches? That's the CIA's answer. I was afraid you'd had surgery or something."

Sarah laughed and turned in his arms. "It wouldn't have had time to heal. And where do you think the idea for those glasses came from in the first place? CIA project from the fifties that never went anywhere so they sold the prototypes to a toy company. They've since perfected the technology. You've got the whole history of the CIA up in that head of yours and you never think to look stuff like that up?"

Chuck rolled his eyes. "It doesn't exactly work like that."

She shrugged it off. The inner workings of the intersect were hardly her primary concern at the moment. The towel started falling off her head and Chuck grabbed it. Sarah laughed softly as he started scrubbing the towel over her hair quickly. "You're going to get it all tangled, Chuck." She protested. And not in the fun way. She shoved him away and scrubbed her hands through, getting most of the tangles before they got out of hand. Sarah tossed the towel over her shoulder and grabbed him by the waist, marched him backwards toward the bed.

A spike of fear shot through him and he sat on the edge of the bed. "Do you have any condoms?" It's not like he would have had any use for them to this point if they'd let him stock them in his room. It would have been _weird_ to have to ask for them anyway.

Sarah climbed onto him, straddling his lap. "No, but it's alright. It's taken care of."

Chuck groaned as he kissed her neck. "I seem to remember you saying that before. Not that I'm complaining, we have a beautiful daughter who I _still_ haven't seen, due almost entirely to that glowing example of medical malpractice, but..."

"You're not going to take my word for it? Don't you trust me?" It was said teasingly but there was just a touch of uncertainty underneath it all.

"Of course I do, the medical profession except Ellie and Awesome? Not so much these days. We've both had some issues with doctors, what with the torture and all..."

"Give me your hand." Sarah yanked her shirt out of her uniform pants and thrust Chuck's hand around to the small of her back. "Feel that? Birth control patch, new kind that won't effect my milk volume. I had two out of this box tested at random in the NSA lab before I left so I know they're good..."

"Paranoid much?" Chuck said, and fell over onto his back.

Sarah snuggled down on his chest. "Well, the amount of planning that I put into tonight, I didn't want to risk a repeat of the Barstow incident."

Chuck groaned. "Neither do I, god do I don't want that to happen again. That morning was shaping up into something great and then Morgan... No. Not going to talk about that. Killing the mood. No killing the mood, Sarah."

She smirked and pulled him over on top of her. "Mmm... no, couldn't bear the thought."

"God, Sar... how long has it been?"

It took a few mental calculations. "I don't know. That damn doctor put me on pelvic rest at what, month five or six?"

"Six I think."

"Four months then give or take?" Sarah said simply. "We've done longer."

"And whose fault was that?" Chuck murmured against her throat. Sarah grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his face around so she could meet his eyes.

"What are you talking about? It wasn't anyone's fault, we just weren't ready..."

"You're joking right?" Chuck said. "Any time from 'Vicky Vale' on, all you had to do was ask."

"Is that right." Sarah mused, and stroked his hair back down. "Lust at first sight, huh?"

"Well, at least when I first saw you in the Weinerlicious uniform. God, the dreams I had about that skirt. You would have been disgusted, I'm usually much more respectful of women even in my naughty dreams. You never would have married me. Just, awful, filthy, _filthy_ stuff."

Sarah smirked up at him. "_How_ filthy?" She said, and ran a finger down his jaw. "Come on, tell me. I want the whole list."

He blushed adorably. "No, I don't think that's such a good idea."

"Come on, baby." She said, kissing him silly and rolling him onto his back so she could straddle him. Once their lips parted and she had her breath back, she put her mouth up to his ear. "For you, I'll try anything once. Preferably more than once if its filthy enough."

"Dfs fdf!" Chuck said, his brain no longer capable of forming his thoughts into words.

"Hmm, never heard of that one before." Her hands found the waist of his jeans and slid under the waistband. "We'll have to do this by trial and error. You'll tell me whether I'm getting hot or cold though, won't you?"

Chuck swallowed nervously and managed a nod that quite eloquently said: _Anything you want, Mrs. Bartowski. _Sarah laughed, giddy at the feel of him under her again at last, and proceeded to employ her newest strategy in Chuck seduction. The kitchen sink approach.

***

When Sarah was finally finished with him, at least for the moment, Chuck lay naked on the bed, arms and legs spread out like a puppet with his strings cut, staring blankly at the ceiling, perfectly exhausted and unable to move. She lay on top of him, still straddling him, breasts pressed into his chest and her head tucked under his chin. Chuck whimpered a little.

Sarah opened her eye, arched an eyebrow. "Please, you're sore? You're not the one who just had a large fleshy protuberance jammed into her various orifices." Sarah growled, licking her teeth. "Repeatedly."

Chuck groaned. "That was your idea." He protested weakly. "I was perfectly happy with the greatest hits, bland, missionary, normal. Some of those positions were a little hard."

"That's what she said. I mean, I said." She glared at him fondly. "I guess that one doesn't really work when the girl says it. Or when the statement is overtly about sex."

"Difficult, I mean. I think I might have strained something."

She made a purring growl in the back of her throat. "Do you need me to kiss it and make it better? I mean, after you wash off. No offense honey, but you're all stinky."

"You have no one to blame for _that _but yourself."

Sarah rolled off him regretfully, sitting gingerly on the cold concrete next to his bed and pushing at him, trying to get him to roll off the bed in the direction of the bathroom. "Seriously, go wash off. I want more sex."

"I'm sorry, baby. The tank is empty. I think I'm about dead. You've killed me."

Sarah mock-pouted. "But we haven't even gotten halfway through that list of yours." Chuck swallowed nervously. The grin Sarah flashed him was predatory. "Go. Drink lots of water, you've lost a lot of fluids, and we don't want you getting dehydrated, do we?"

Chuck shook his head and pried himself out of the sweat-soaked sheets, headed for the bathroom. He knew that look, arguing with that look was always a mistake. "And make it snappy." She called after him and checked her watch. "You've got three minutes. If I have to come in there after you, the list is only going to get longer." Chuck whimpered audibly.

She just smiled and snuggled into the sheets, drinking in their mingled scents, facing the bathroom so she could watch the interplay of muscles in his back and rear. For now at least, everything was right in the world, and in a couple minutes it would be even more right.

A/N 2: Next chapter still needs some polish before I'm satisfied its ready to see the light of day. Also, action will return if that's your thing.


	9. Chapter 9: Under Siege

A/N: So, it seems like a lot of people were interested in Nancy's reaction to the end of the last chapter. Hopefully you won't be disappointed by the fallout from that...

Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck...

Chapter 9: Under Siege

1814 CST

Back in the security booth, Nancy sat at her post, eyes glazed. She wasn't watching anymore, just staring off into space, but she had been watching when... She shuddered just thinking about it. The woman was insane! There was no audio, but... there had been a lot of talking before the two hour nonstop live porn show. Whatever was going on, Ford was completely off her rocker, and Nancy had no idea how to deal with the situation. Legally, could she do anything? It was disgusting, the woman had dyed her hair the exact same shade as a dead woman in order to lure him into—They were two consenting adults, though one of them was taking advantage of a man grieving for his lost wife— and there the argument kind of bogged down. There had been a huge amount of advantage taking going on, a fair amount of it on Agent Carmichael's part. Though Ford had seemed really into it at the time. Amazingly into it. The woman had been practically glowing, the entire time, even when he...

Nancy shook herself roughly. _Do not think about what you saw. Do not! DO NOT! _Her eyes fell back to the monitor before she realized what she was doing. Carmichael wasn't on the monitor anymore, just Ford, lying on her side on the cot, sniffing the mess they'd made of the sheets. Gross. Jill Ford was a gross, gross, CIA _slut_! She had to do _some_thing, Nancy just couldn't figure out what. A confrontation? Maybe she should talk to Agent Carmichael, see what they'd talked about, before... obliquely though, without letting on the kinds of things she'd seen them do to each other. She could do oblique. Frankly, there was no other way to address the problem _than_ obliquely without blushing herself to death.

***

Sarah stretched and checked her watch. Chuck's three minutes were almost up. But, she'd give him an extra fifteen seconds just to be safe. She lay back on the cot and sighed contentedly, staring up at the ceiling, and arched an eyebrow. That was odd. Sarah thought back to the surveillance monitors in the security room, counting mentally, and mapping the locations of all the cameras she'd disabled earlier. They were mostly small, but noticeable if you knew where to look, and Sarah knew where to look.

She got up, picking up the top sheet from where it had fallen during the fray and wrapping it around her naked form. Fifteen. Sarah felt a chill that had nothing to do with her sweat slick body in the air conditioning, and started counting again. Fifteen, again. There had only been fourteen that morning. Her eyes widened and she blushed crimson straight to her ears, as she took in just exactly where that newly installed camera fifteen was located, the perfect angle it had of Chuck's little twin bed, what exactly would be showing up on that tape, in high definition, vivid color and possibly with accompanying audio. She'd been quite... vocal about what Chuck had been doing to her, what she wanted him to do to her, how good a job he'd been doing, and at the time, she'd been grateful for the thick concrete walls that had allowed her to be completely uninhibited. Now she was mortified.

"Sarah, what's wrong?" Chuck said, walking back in from the bathroom, plastic cup full of water in hand.

"I missed one." She said mournfully, her face and now even down to her bosom felt on fire from embarrassment. She hitched the sheet higher to cover herself more fully. "Dammit, I missed one."

"One what?" Chuck frowned. "What are you talking about..."

Sarah pointed wordlessly at the pinhole camera overlooking their makeshift marriage bed, struggling to keep the sheet from shifting. Chuck was still frowning, his gaze following the line of her arm. "Is that? What is that?" He said.

Her head fell down to stare in embarrassment at her feet. "A camera," she said, almost under her breath.

"Oh. But you looped all th—" He stopped, taking in again what she'd said. "Oh. OH!" Chuck gathered his wife into his arms, wrapping her in a hug. "It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine, baby."

Sarah nuzzled her head into his shoulder. "Really. Do you know who was on surveillance duty tonight?"

"No, what difference does it make?"

"The brunette skank who thinks I'm trying to impersonate your dead wife and use my horrible CIA sex tricks against you, remember her? Well, now she knows my horrible CIA sex tricks too, _in_timately."

"I don't know about horrible, I'm kind of fond of your CIA sex tricks, myself."

Sarha punched him playfully in the arm. Mostly playfully. She put her shoulder into it, but not her hips.

"Okay. So. Plan?" Chuck said into the top of her head after a few moments' thought.

Sarah looked up at him. "Why do I always have to come up with the plans?"

"Well I _did_ fail spy school." She rolled her eyes and grinned, so Chuck figured he was doing okay in Operation: 'Keep Sarah From Killing Nancy and Blowing Her Cover' "Anyway... I figure first order of business is stealing and destroying the tape of the Sex Olympics?"

"You figure correctly. Get dressed, and meet me in the upstairs lounge. You have access to that right?"

"Um... not officially." Chuck shrugged. "But I could bypass the card reader if you gave me a phillips-head screwdriver and some wire cutters."

Sarah grinned. "How about I just give you my spare keycard. They'll figure it out eventually, but I think my cover is about ready to give up the ghost anyway. Is anybody currently in the facility a Ring Agent?"

"Not that I'm aware of, and we finished vetting all the staff yesterday." Chuck grinned. "Are you going to get dressed? Can I watch?"

"What could possibly be sexy about watching me cover _up_."

"Sarah. Everything you do is sexy to me." He shrugged. "I thought you would have figured that out by now."

"Come on, goofus." Sarah said, going up on tiptoe to grab her panties from the ceiling fan and stepping into them. "No oogling me right now. Later you can oogle all you want."

"You promise? I'm kind of overdue for some good oogling." Sarah threw his boxers right at his head.

***

"Okay, so. There is a plan, yes?" Chuck asked a few minutes later, sitting in the lounge with Sarah. Frank glanced at them and arched an eyebrow at Sarah/Jill Ford's new hair color, but kept on his way.

"We're drawing attention to ourselves. It's time we blew this Popsicle stand. There's a contingency for this, but it's not really all that well fleshed out. Casey said he's almost finished with our escape plan, but that could mean days, or hours." Sarah tapped her fingers absently on his knee. "Right then, tape first. I am not spending the rest of my life with that lurking around in the shadows. Come on."

"I'm not supposed to go in the security booth. There was an 'incident.'"

Sarah rolled her eyes, and grabbed him by the arm, tugged him down the corridor. "This is going to be an awkward enough conversation without having to do it alone."

Sarah waved her ID across the scanner and whipped open the door. Nancy was expecting them, arms crossed, leaning back in her chair. "This is going to be a little awkward, Ford."

"Ever the master of understatement." Sarah said. "And actually, it's Carmichael."

"Bull." Nancy said, glancing at Chuck. "I don't mean to be a bitch here, Chuck. But your wife is dead. This... woman... is just using a circumstantial resemblance to..."

Chuck shook his head. "Nancy... I know you think I'm in a vulnerable place emotionally, but what do you want? Fingerprints? Dental records? DNA swabs? It's her. The sleep-giggles are the dead giveaway. Ow." Chuck rubbed his shoulder where Sarah had punched him.

"I do _not_ sleep giggle." She growled. Sarah pulled her wedding and engagement rings off over her head. The chain parted and she slipped them back on her finger where they belonged. "Sorry for the secrecy Nancy, but we didn't know if anyone in the bunker was compromised."

"Um... we're also going to need the tape." Chuck put in. Sarah flushed and punched him in the arm again. "Ow, dammit. Cut that out woman!"

"Chuck! You were supposed to work up to it!" Sarah said. "God, this is just like that time in San Francisco."

"Hey, what were we supposed to do, just let them hang on to video of—"

"It was thermal, Chuck. It's not like they would have known it was _us _us."

"Now you're being irrational." Chuck said. "Beckman would have known, and she—"

"Oh that is just typical! Blame my pregnancy hormones any time we have the slightest little disagreement! God forbid I—"

"Okay, that's just not true. I wasn't saying any such thing, and I don't think that—"

"Perfect, you think I'm irrational and now I can't even defend myself without you turning it around into some kind of—"

"Ahem!" Nancy said. "Well you certainly argue like a married couple. And you fuck like I don't know what."

Both of them blushed at that comment. And didn't say anything for a moment. The silence was finally broken when Sarah pulled her gun. "About that tape."

"Relax, you freak." Nancy said. "I figured I'd need it as evidence to get you fired, but I'd just as soon never have to think about it again. Here." Nancy tossed a DVD. Chuck fumbled it and nearly dropped it before he finally managed to corral the thing.. "I assume you're going to try to break him out? Need a hand?"

"Not from you." Sarah growled.

Chuck grabbed her arm to stop the gun from going up in Nancy's face. "Hey. I appreciate the offer, but. Sarah can be a little touchy."

Sarah glowered at him.

Nancy grunted. "You mean she's a jealous bitch?" Sarah tensed, and Chuck had to use both hands to keep the gun down this time.

"I'll bitch you, bitch!" Sarah said.

"You're really not helping here, lady." Chuck said toward Nancy. Sarah opened her mouth to say something, and Chuck slapped a hand over her mouth. "Just don't rat us out. We'll figure something out."

Her phone rang and Sarah bit his hand, not exactly gently, but not hard enough to break the skin. Once she'd wriggled out of his grip, Sarah glared at the caller ID. "It's Casey."

"Bartowski." She said, as she put the phone to her ear, without thinking, then glared at Chuck yet again.

"You never heard that name." He explained to Nancy. The brunette's eyes widened.

"Yes. I understand. Of course. Thanks John. Who are you talking to? Okay. Yeah. That's right. I'll be in touch."

"How bad?" Chuck asked.

Sarah ignored him, turning to the other woman. "Nancy, bring up the external cameras."

"What am I looking for?" The brunette guard inquired.

Chuck sighed. "I'd say the half dozen or so black ops helicopters might be the tipoff."

"Closest reinforcements are at Fort Hood. Twenty minutes out by helicopter, if they were on high alert. Which they're not. Figure forty five minutes total before we can expect any help?" Sarah asked.

"Sounds about right." Nancy replied. "The outer doors should hold that long. They're eighteen inches of precipitation hardened titanium carbide. It'd take a tactical nuke to get them into this place."

They all stared at the cameras as Nancy flipped through the external shots. The guard shack out by the main road was a burning ruin. And the perimeter guards in their humvees had been cut to ribbons by the 25 mm auto cannons mounted on the two circling attack helicopters that they caught glimpses of.

The cameras started going out, slowly, one by one, as they were spotted.

***

The Ring Agents were unloading something from the rear cargo ramp of the single CH-46 cargo helicopter they had brought. Most of the helicopters were MH-60 Blackhawk helicopters. Chuck could do the math easily in his head a dozen soldiers each, put the numbers on the assault team at sixty men total, plus whoever was on the cargo helicopter and whatever it was they were unloading. He didn't get a good look at the thing before one of the Ring agent's shot out the camera. He blinked, a mini flash giving him an unsettling feeling in his gut but little else, just the top sheet of a file labeled Experimental Prototype. "Can you zoom in on whatever that is they're unloading?" He said.

Nancy looked at him oddly, opened her mouth to ask why, but Sarah beat her to it. "Don't ask questions, Nancy. You don't need to know. Do like he says." The brunette guard shrugged and flicked quickly through the external cameras until she found one that had a good field of view. She panned the camera over, zoomed in on the cart being rolled around toward the main doors.

The second flash was much longer, detailing the experimental physics behind the thing. "Shit." Chuck said, once he'd shaken off the flash. "Sarah, get Casey on the line again, see if he can check the status of an Experimental project codenamed _Arquebus_."

She shrugged and dug out her phone. Sarah growled under her breath. "Nothing. No signal. They must have a jammer, or they took out the cell tower with those attack choppers on their way in."

"What's this project _Arquebus?_" Nancy wanted to know. "How did you recognize it so fast?" Chuck put a hand briefly on Sarah's arm, out of sight of Nancy, telling her to play along with his story.

"Alright. Fine." Chuck said. "I was team lead on project _Arquebus._ Its a prototype sonic Cannon, but it never worked as advertised. Instead of blasting through just about anything, it... It destabilizes the molecular field of whatever its used on."

"You're making this up!" Nancy exclaimed.

Sarah shook her head, doing a fair impression of muted aggravation. Project _Arquebus?_ He must have flashed. "You really shouldn't be telling her this, hon."

"It's not that crazy." Chuck went on. "All it does is turn metal incredibly brittle. Doesn't matter how thick the stuff is, it vibrates the crystalline matrix out of alignment, weakening the material on a base level. What's the door made out of?"

"Titanium Carbide, the stuff we make tank armor out of." Nancy said.

"That's what I was afraid you'd say." Chuck said. "They'll use _Arquebus_ to breach the outer doors. Once they fire that thing, a couple guys with sledgehammers could get through that door in minutes. They'll just toss a couple satchel charges and they'll be in."

"Then, we've got to get you to the panic room." Nancy said, grabbing Chuck by the arm.

"No." Sarah shot back right on top of her, grabbing his other arm. "We get Lisa and we sneak out and steal one of those helicopters. Casey's going to be waiting for us."

"Yeah, who's gonna fly it?" Nancy growled.

Chuck shrugged and shared a knowing smirk with Sarah. "Flip you for it?" Sarah rolled her eyes.

"C'mon. We need to hit the armory and get you a vest. Nobody shoots holes in my man but me."

"Sarah, you're not going to shoot me." Chuck said, shaking his arm free of Nancy's grasp.

Sarah grunted. "Sure I won't, just make sure the skank keeps her hands to herself."

"Oh, _I_'m a skank? Like I didn't just watch the two of you—"

"We're _married!_" Sarah shouted. "That's different! And don't think I don't know why that camera in the bathroom overlooked the shower."

"What camera in the bathroom?" Chuck said. "You watched me shower!"

"What do you mean, what camera in the bathroom!" Sarah shot back. "You were looking right at the thing!" She glared at Nancy. "How often did you catch the showercam, Nancy?" She said, quivering in fury.

Nancy blushed and tugged at her collar. "I, uh... we should get moving. Strike team incoming and everything?"

"This conversation isn't over, skank."

The rumble of the demolition charge blowing the main access doors several levels up was followed quickly by the harsh clamor of the emergency alarm.

***

"Wait. How did _you_ know about the showercam?" Chuck said. "Sarah?"

"Now isn't really the time, Chuck." She said, cutting her eyes across at Nancy. Chuck held the door open to the stairwell.

"Did _you_ watch me in the shower?" Chuck smirked and waggled his eyebrows. "See anything you liked?"

"Oh, gag." Nancy said from the upper landing. "I'd tell you two to get a room, but I've seen what you get up to when that happens and I sort of prefer the bickerflirting." Which promptly shut Chuck and Sarah up. But Chuck did take the opportunity to give Sarah's backside a quick squeeze while he was holding the door open for her.

"Not appropriate right now, baby." She hissed. "Oh, shit. The baby! Nancy, we need to get up to Daycare, fast. It's on the route they'll have to take to get to Chuck's quarters."

She frowned, "What makes you think they're after Chuck?"

"They're always after Chuck." Sarah said. "I'll go for Lisa. You take Chuck to the armory. We'll meet back up outside."

"No." Chuck said, grabbing her arm as she turned away.

Her eyes flared. "Let go of me. I'm not leaving our daughter!"

"Come on. I'm not saying that— look, your cover's still good, yes?" Sarah nodded. "So they don't know Lisa's mine, they have no reason to go to Daycare, just past it. Point it out on the map, I'll get Lisa and then meet you."

"You don't know what she looks like." Sarah said.

"Blond hair, blue eyes like her mother, right?" Chuck grinned. "I'll figure it out. Worst comes to worst I just take the cutest baby, yeah?"

Sarah glared daggers at him, and he chuckled. "I'm kidding. I just steal the Ford baby, who is in fact Lisa, right? I didn't miss a chapter anywhere?"

"And so you head right at the heavily armed team of black ops commandos bent on either capturing you or killing you?" Sarah demanded. "There are easier ways to get out of a marriage, Chuck. You don't have to go get yourself killed."

"That's not..." He grabbed her and hauled her a couple yards away from nosy Nancy, fixing Sarah with a glare like she'd never seen. "Do not even joke about something like that. This is the best plan. You're more comfortable than I am around guns anyway. Just give me your tranq gun and I'll be fine." He tapped the side of his head as evidence. "And we're definitely going to sit down and have a very long talk about this 'getting out of our marriage' bullshit you've got knocking around in that beautiful crazy melon of yours."

***

The kiss was sudden, unexpected and absolutely mindblowing. Sarah's toes curled in her boots, and all her usual responses to Chuck's attention started up. But then it was over, he was storming off with an expression on his face Sarah couldn't place, except to know that she was scared for anyone who came between Chuck and their daughter. Then she realized that was why he took the tranq gun instead of a real gun, and she was scared for him again. The emotion he was feeling clicked into place, it was a killing rage. If he'd taken a gun, he would use it. Once she finally got her breathing under control, Nancy chimed in.

"Need to fix your lipstick before we storm the armory?" She said snidely.

"Shut up and move it, skank."

They went down the corridor, still arguing. "You realize I thought he was a widower. Fair game, right blondie?"

"Not even over my dead body, get me?" Sarah said, opening a door to the connecting hallway. "He's off limits. Forever."

"Who's off limits?" Frank asked standing in the hallway beyond the door.

"Shit!" Sarah said, training her gun on him.

"Relax, CIA." Nancy explained. "Ford's actually Carmichael's wife."

"The dead one?"

"Obviously not." Sarah said, gun barrel not wavering in the slightest.

Nancy cleared her throat. "We're on our way to the armory."

"Where's our priority protectee?" He looked Sarah up and down with barely disguised interest. "The Grinch's husband? You'd think she'd be with him."

Sarah's eyes narrowed. "Either get out of my way, or I shoot you, Frank."

"Where's our protectee?" Frank said again.

Sarah pulled back the hammer on her sidearm. "Last chance. Out of my way Frank."

"Christ, CIA." Nancy said. "He's getting their baby from Daycare and we're meeting at the third sublevel staging area."

"You're a piece of work Ford." He said, and inched his way around them. "I'm going to back him up."

Sarah lowered her gun, and then, once the door had shut behind him, whispered. "Thanks, Frank."

"He's right. You are a piece of work." Nancy said as they approached the armory.

"Is your husband or daughter in harm's way right now?" Sarah said, affronted. "Is there a team of armed men trying to kidnap either of them?" Sarah bit off each word as Nancy put in the code on the door. "Judge me when the answer's something other than, 'duh... I.. uh, no.'"

"You really think I sound like that?"

"Just shut up and gear up."

"Anything you say, CIA."

***

Chuck used Sarah's spare ID to get through the security doors keeping the protectees out of the upper levels. It wasn't as nice up there as he expected. The smell of cordite was heavy in the air. Chuck had flashed on the layout of the place weeks ago, and figured out the best approach to daycare that would keep him out of the way of the incoming strike team. Bile rose in his throat when he came across a pair of dead guards, blood in sticky streaks across the polished concrete flooring. A radio blared to life maybe a couple dozen yards up the corridor, around a bend. He ducked behind a watercooler, fumbling the safety of his tranq gun. The radio blared again, but Chuck couldn't make out the words through the crash of static.

"Say again Bravo Six. This is Bravo 2-2. Did not copy last. Over."

The only reply was another burst of static over the radio.

"Screw it," Bravo 2-2 said. "Let's head down guys. Carmichael is target priority one, but there's gotta be a bunch of intel we can glean from this place. Anybody not in a uniform you go nonlethal." Chuck risked a glance out of cover. Three men, all big, over six feet, decked out in black combat fatigues with suppressed automatic weapons were just coming around the corner toward him. Their faces were covered by black balaclavas and heavy ski goggles. He blinked, flashing briefly, only long enough to tell him they were carrying MP-10s, the 10mm variant of the H&K MP5, complete with integral sound suppressor. Probably one of the best, most effective close quarters weapons on the planet. The math wasn't difficult, at a dozen yards, any one of the three men could hipfire a three round burst straight through his heart in the split second it would take Chuck to adopt an adequate firing stance and take aim on the first man. He might be just fast enough to take the first, but the second and the third would kill him as easily as zipping their flies.

There was nowhere to go, and they would see him before they went another half dozen steps. But their faces were covered, they were professionals. It was worth the risk. He stuffed the tranq gun in the waistband of his jeans. "Don't shoot." He said. "I'm just trying to get my daughter from daycare. Don't shoot."

"Who the hell are you?" The three commandos trained their guns on him. "You're not a guard."

"No." Chuck said, hands in the air. "I'm just... My ex wife is a guard. This is my week for custody, and I had to come by and then the alarms are going off."

"What's your name?"

"John. John Ford."

"I've got a Ford on the personnel list." Bravo 2-2 said. "Checks out. Get the hell out of here Ford." They started away down the hallway, then one of the others stopped and turned around.

"Wait. You have ID?"

"I left it in my car."

The commando raised his gun and the two others took up covering positions. "And they let you into the secure facility and didn't give you a visitor's badge?"

"Hell." Chuck said. "I figured you were in a hurry you wouldn't think about that until I was around the corner."

"Who the hell are you?"

"Carmichael." Chuck said. "Charles Carmichael. I heard you're looking for me."

Bravo 2-2 snorted. "You've got style Carmichael. I'll give you that."

"Don't do anything stupid Frank." Chuck said. "I've got this."

"Nice tr—" The first gunshot echoed through the corridor. Bravo 2-2 coughed blood out of the rim of his balaclava, collapsing to the ground. The two others spun, and Chuck's hands darted for the tranq gun he had in the waistband of his jeans. Another shot rang out, and he heard the muffled chatter of the two remaining commandos' MP-10s. Chuck squeezed off two tranq darts into the back of the guard on the right, swivelled across to finish the last, but the man was already down. Chuck lowered his tranq gun and darted over to Frank, who was down to one knee.

"You okay, Frank?" Chuck asked.

The burly guard chuckled. "Peachy. Teflon rounds, one went through the vest. Got me in the gut. Couldn't you have let me get the drop on them clean, CIA?"

"I couldn't risk my daughter's life on you not getting all of them." Chuck said dragging Frank's arm up over his shoulder and hauling him to his feet. "Come on, up you get. Worse comes to worst I can use you as a human shield."

"Shit. Blondie really is your wife."

"You met?"

"Could say that." Frank said. "She put a gun in my face."

Chuck smirked. "Sounds like my Sarah. You mind popping this last guy? He could remember about my daughter. I won't risk her."

"Cold, man. You deserve each other." Frank said.

"I meant— Don't you have twilight darts? And I was joking about the human shield thing."

"Oh, so _she's_ the cold one?" Frank muttered, handing Chuck a different clip for his tranq gun. Chuck laughed and put a second dart behind the commando's ear before slinging the man's MP-10 over his shoulder.

"Daycare's right next to the infirmary anyway. Don't think this means you're my friend or something."

"Thanks, CIA."

"Did I ever say I was sorry about the whole 'trying to kill you' thing from before?"

"No."

"Good. You were being a jerk."

***

Chuck helped a barely mobile Frank down the corridor. They came across more bodies as they went, few of them even had time to get weapons out. How the hell was the assault going so well? Aside from the three Chuck and Frank had disabled, they had yet to see a single Ring Operative down. "Gomez." Chuck finally said.

"What?" Frank coughed.

"Nevermind." Chuck said. Of course, he must have given up guard postings, emergency procedures, everything. They'd been too concerned on if he'd given up Chuck being in the bunker, they hadn't thought of the simple things. "Too late to do anything about it now." The Ring team would be heading for the armory to stop any real organized resistance. Dammit, he'd sent Sarah right into the middle of it. "One mission at a time." He said under his breath.

Once they got to the daycare center, Chuck let Frank slide down to sit leaned back against the wall. The woman in charge of the daycare wore Sergeant's stripes, and trained a gun on him as soon as she saw his clothes. "Who the hell are you?" She said, coming out from cover.

"Charles Carmichael." Chuck said, putting his hands up. "I'm here to get my daughter?"

"Carmichael. The protectee?" She frowned. "I thought your wife and daughter died in childbirth."

"So did I. Kind of got a bone to pick with the head of the NSA over that, by the way." Chuck explained. "Why don't you put the gun down and hand over my daughter."

She tensed, pointing the gun in his face. "There's no Carmichael here."

"My wife was stationed here undercover." Chuck said. "Jill Ford?"

"Why didn't she come?"

"She's securing the armory. You may have noticed we're under attack?"

"Just give him his kid, Mary."

"Frank?" Sergeant Mary said, momentarily taking her eyes off of Chuck. "Jesus, what did you do to him?" She started turning the gun back on chuck, only to fall over, snoring softly, a tranq dart poking out from her neck.

"Thanks for the diversion, Frank."

"Did you really need to do that, CIA?"

"I don't have time to talk everything out with everybody I meet, Frank."

"No, I get it. Just, I think she's pregnant."

"Oh, crap." Chuck frowned, stooped and plucked the dart out of her neck. He grabbed her gun and stuffed it in his waistband at the small of his back. "I hope she's okay."

"You're a weird guy, Carmichael."

"Whatever." Chuck said, walking through the Daycare center in search of his daughter. It wasn't as difficult finding her as Sarah had tried to make it sound. There was only a single infant, the other kids were two three or four, and there were only about a dozen children total. And the curls were a dead giveaway. Sarah hadn't mentioned those, and he found himself grinning down at her.

She blinked up at him in the crib as he bent to scoop her up. "Where's Ms. Mary?" The oldest boy asked. "Why are you taking Lisa?"

"Ms. Mary's taking a nap." Chuck said. "And Lisa's my daughter. I want everybody to stay in here until Ms. Mary comes and gets you. Okay? It's not safe out there."

The boy frowned. "Then why are you taking Lisa? She's safe here. We look out for each other."

Chuck grinned. "Thanks, bud. But some bad people are coming for me, and if they found out Lisa was here, they'd try to take her. I don't want to put the rest of you guys in danger."

"Be careful mister."

"I will be."

On his way out Chuck gave Frank the Sergeant's weapon. "You need me to drag you over to the infirmary?"

"Nah, I'm good. Mary's coming around. Move your ass, CIA. I don't want the black mark in my service record for getting a protectee killed. You take care of that kid."

"I will." Chuck said and clapped Frank on the shoulder. Frank grimaced in pain. "I'll see you around, Frank."

"God I hope not."


	10. Chapter 10: Under Siege 2

Chapter 10: Under Siege II

A/N: I couldn't resist, although that's the one on the train and it doesn't make any sense in this context, but hey. I would have felt weird not having anything to say before blasting right off.

Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck.

The Bunker's Armory:

Sarah dumped a full rucksack of gear out onto the table. "What the hell are you doing, Blondie?" Nancy shouted, strapping herself into a body armor vest. "We don't have time for you to root around in your purse looking for tampons.

"Quiet, skank." Sarah shot back. "Throw me half a dozen of those ceramic vest plates and an extra tactical BDU."

Nancy glared at her like she was insane. "You're joking. What the hell are you doing needlepoint?"

Sarah grunted and ripped the webbing off of a combat harness. "Making a damn baby carrier, what do you think I'm doing?"

Nancy's radio blared and she rolled her eyes. "Hostiles on Sub-level 4. Da—sksh—ey're going for the armory! Say again. Anyone in the Armory respond."

"This is Broyles." Nancy said into her handset. "I've got... Ford with me."

"About a dozen hostiles —sksh— ed your way, Broyles. Get out of —sksh— fast before you get trapped."

"Shit." Nancy said. "You about done with arts and crafts time over there?"

"Don't rush me!" Sarah pushed down at the bottom of the jury rigged carrier, and the plates fell down and pinched her hand. "Damn it. Buy me a couple minutes."

Nancy sighed and stuck her head out the door. The whine of bullets on metal came almost immediately, but no sound of gunfire. Nancy took cover and stuck her M-4 out into the corridor, spraying wildly. "Buy her a couple minutes she says. No problem. Ten to one odds, and I have no idea what I'm facing, but no problem." She tossed her empty magazine out into the corridor to the sound of more bullet impacts. "They're using silencers. No way to even get a fix on how many are out there!" But Blondie was still occupied with the baby carrier-rucksack. Nancy snapped a fresh magazine into her carbine and sprayed the hallway blindly again.

Sarah cut a slit in the side of the rucksack, then threaded the BDU pants through it, tied the cuff in a knot on the outside. That should hold that, which only left. "Hurry Blondie!" Sarah growled under her breath and wove the plates through the shredded BDU shirt, tying the ends of the sleeves around the rucksack's shoulder straps to secure it in place. She stuck her fist in again, and the plates didn't move. But, she needed to know for sure before she would risk putting her daughter in the thing. Sarah grabbed a pair of shotguns off a rack and dropped them in. All told, they should be about twelve pounds, Lisa was barely more than ten and a half. Slipping her arms through the straps, she lifted the awkward burden, down her front so she could look in and make sure the plates didn't— yes. It was ready. Bullet proof baby carrier, she should patent the thing and make a fortune.

She dumped the shotguns out and stuffed a couple t-shirts in it for extra cushioning and slipped the rucksack on properly. "Okay, let's move." Sarah said, slinging an M-4 from one shoulder and a shotgun from the other.

Nancy shook her head. "Too late, Blondie." She said, and smashed the security lock on the inside. "They got guys down the other end of the corridor already. Must have got somebody to smuggle the layout to them. We're trapped."

"Well how the hell did you let that happen?" Sarah barked. "We've got fucking C-4 and flash bangs in here! Why didn't you say something?"

"Me!"

"Shut up, too late to bitch about it now." Sarah said, waving away the other woman's angry scowl and trying to remain calm. Chuck and Lisa were out there and they needed her. "See if you can raise any backup on the radio."

"Who put her in charge?" Nancy muttered, but dug out her radio. "This is Broyles. We are hunkered down in the armory. Need assistance. Repeat need assistance."

***

"Negative, Broyles. —sksh— on your own." Chuck heard someone official sounding say over the radio. Dammit, mommy needed help too.

"Shush. Baby." Chuck said in a hoarse whisper, glancing over the counter. He clicked the radio handset off and ducked back under cover, hoping the blare of static hadn't given away their position. But the commandos crab-walked by without discovering them.

He'd been spotted a few minutes earlier trying to hack a door reader that Sarah's ID keycard hadn't had access permissions for. It hadn't been on the schematics he remembered, but it was the only way up from where he was, and doing it with an arm full of fussy baby hadn't made it any easier. Just as bullets had started pinging off the walls to his left, the door had come open and he'd slipped through.

Now he didn't know _where _he was. The place wasn't on the schematics he'd flashed on weeks earlier. That or the flash was fading. Either way, he was pretty much lost. It looked like something straight out of an office building, desks, office supplies, computers. Computers meant intranet, meant he could hack his way onto the main trunkline and maybe help guide Sarah to safety. So, yay for computers.

On the downside. The door hadn't shut properly behind him, and the half dozen commandos who'd followed didn't seem like the nice 'taking prisoners' type of commandos he and Frank had met on the way to Daycare. But they were gone for now, and Lisa made an odd mewling noise and Chuck frowned down at her in worry. "What's wrong, baby?" He whispered. "Dirty diapie? Hungry? Cause I can only help you out with one of those, and I'd have to use my only shirt." Lisa seemed to quirk an eyebrow at him.

"Glb." She said.

"Huh." Chuck said, and scratched his head. "This is going to be difficult if you won't cooperate." He held her up to his face and sniffed. "No dirty diapie. Sorry baby, we need mommy if you're hungry." Chuck shrugged and cradled her carefully in both arms, rocked her gently. The mewling trailed off a little and Chuck grinned and held her up so he could make a funny face for her. Lisa made a weird pouty face he couldn't figure out, then puked milk down his chest. And after that, she grinned. "Uch. Really? No no, don't be sad. I still love you anyway."

Chuck peeked his head over the counter again, still all clear. Being extremely careful to always support Lisa's head properly, he crept over to a nearby desk, and tried the drawers. Locked of course. He blinked, and just managed to secure Lisa in his arms before the flash hit. Chuck shook his head, and snatched a paper clip from the cup on the desk, bent it out awkwardly with one hand still full of month-old baby. Picking the lock was surprisingly easy. He blinked again, at the tag at the end of the lockpicking tutorial, and grinned. "Mommy really _is_ the best at that. It even says so in the supercomputer in daddy's brain. Isn't that nice?"

The drawer was full of file folders, which Chuck spread across the desk, frowning. Top Secret, Eyes Only, all those kind of things he was used to seeing, they were commonplace. But there was one folder that was matte-black, not the usual manilla color. A gray tab sticking out of the folder bore two words. Project Bespin. "Cloud city? What, did _Lando_ work for the CIA too?" He whispered to Lisa, sliding the folder closer. And then he flashed again. Chuck winced at the throbbing in his temples and blinked half a dozen times. "Well, that's useful to know." He yanked the keyboard over and lowered Lisa gently into his lap, grabbed the handset and clicked it back on while he typed. "Broyles, go to channel... 13."

The radio crackled. "Broyles."

"Put Ford on."

"Who is this?" It was Sarah's voice. Even if he didn't recognize it himself, the way Lisa seemed to perk up told him it was her.

"Carmichael. This may be a party line, so careful what you say. Precious cargo in tow. You have a terminal in there?"

"Yeah? I'm loading it up. What now?"

***

Sarah held the radio handset, frowning. "What now?" The terminal suddenly sprang to life. Large block letters filled the screen.

_False floor in conference room, under the table. _

_Escape tunnel._

"Copy that?" The radio crackled back to life.

"We copy." Sarah said. "How do we get there? We're pinned down, and the door's sealed."

"I've got it covered." Chuck said from the radio. The terminal beeped and the screen shifted.

_Got Fbs? Now's the time. Don't use NVGs. _

And then the lights went out, and the screen shifted to a view from the handful of cameras in the hallway that had so far escaped detection. Once the night vision cameras switched on, Sarah and Nancy could make out the commandos putting on their vision enhancers.

Nancy stared at the screen in awe. "That husband of yours is something else."

"Don't become a problem for me, Nancy."

"Aw, you're warming up to me. You actually remembered my name."

"Don't push it, okay?" Sarah said. The door swept open, and both women slid a pair of flash bangs out, one of them facing each direction, squeezed their eyes closed and plugged their ears. A split second before the stun grenades went, the lights came back on. Sarah rolled into the corridor, M-4 at the ready. Nancy took the other direction down the hallway, but in both cases the commandos were all down, clawing at their eyes or moaning. "Okay, I'm turned around." Sarah admitted. "Which way's the conference room?"

"Follow me, Blondie." Nancy said.

***

Chuck hid under the desk and grunted, glad that he'd grabbed that MP-10 from one of the commandos Frank had killed, and equally glad it was silenced. He patted the bulky shape strapped to his back, just to make sure it was still there. He wasn't thrilled about the idea of having to fire an actual firearm while carrying a baby, but at least it wouldn't shatter her tiny eardrums if he had to. Luckily enough, the access keys he'd gotten from the last flash had let him access the _full_ bunker schematics right off the base computers, something he was sure Gomez the Barber hadn't been able to betray to the ring, especially if they hadn't even been in the intersect. He should be able to slip past most of the Ring agents and meet back up with Sarah in the parking lot without too much trouble.

"He must have doubled back past us." One of the Ring commandos remarked. "Besides, we don't have time to clear all these rooms. The AirCav should be here in less than half an hour." Chuck glanced under the edge of the desk and saw their boots retreating back the way they'd come. Once he was sure they'd left, he levered himself and Lisa out from under the desk awkwardly. Now he just had to print up a copy of those plans and he could slip out to meet Sarah. That would just take a couple of quick hotkeys and—

Chuck squinted at the screen. Tray 2 Load Letter? Tray 2 Load Letter! Seriously. Someone was going to get a strongly worded letter about refilling the printer paper in a timely manner when he got out of there. "So munchkin?" Chuck remarked and tickled Lisa's nose with a fingertip. "If you were a ream of printer paper, where would you be?"

Lisa drooled milky spit down her chin and burbled happily. "Hmm." Chuck whispered. "I'll check, but you're on the hook if it's not in the supply closet."

***

"So what exactly is the deal with you two?" Nancy said, covering a side-passage branching off their escape tunnel.

Sarah scrunched her nose and huffed her bangs out of her face. "What are you talking about?"

"Please. I've never seen a woman so blatantly overprotective of her man before." Nancy said. "I mean, seriously, he can obviously take care of himself. Did they show you the video of him taking down Frank and Carl at the same time while cuffed and shackled?"

"I don't know what you mean." Sarah said.

"He's supposed to be project lead on some super-science weapon project and he just happens to also be some kind of martial arts expert?" Nancy said. "Come on!"

"You're pushing it Nancy." Sarah growled. "You don't need to know."

"I'm not asking for government secrets. I just meant." Nancy shrugged. "Never mind. Clear this way. Let's go."

They walked in silence for a couple minutes, except for calls back and forth of 'clear' as they passed side-tunnels. Finally Sarah grunted. "Fine. He's the first person I ever met who loved me for me besides my dad. Not who they thought I was, but who I actually was. I'll kill anyone who so much as looks at him wrong."

"No offense? But that's kind of fucked up, emotionally speaking. You know that right?"

"Of course I know that." Sarah said testily, and silence reigned in the escape tunnel but for the sound of steam hissing through the pipes overhead and the hum of electricity. Finally they approached what looked to be the end of the line. A door marked with the usual 'Emergency Exit' lingo. Sarah stopped and turned to the brunette. "You can head back if you want. Relief teams will be here in another twenty minutes or so."

Nancy frowned. "Hey. I'm not leaving you without backup. We look after each other in this unit, Blondie."

Sarah tried not to let her surprise show too much on her face. She clenched her jaw to keep it from dropping open. "I appreciate that. Really, I do. But our escape plan is only good for three."

"Right. You, me, Chuck."

"Not what I meant." Sarah said, pulled her tranq gun and put one in Nancy's neck.

"Why..." She mumbled. Sarah closed the distance and caught her so she didn't collapse awkwardly and hurt herself.

"Nothing personal, just can't risk you getting captured." Sarah said, setting her down gently. "You know about my daughter. That and..." She glanced down. "Aaand... she's out."

Sarah undid the velcro on Nancy's vest and pulled it off over the other woman's head before stuffing it into the rucksack. Chuck needed the vest more than she did. The door was confusing at first. There was no knob, no pushbar, just the red and white emergency exit signage. She frowned, and finally spotted the card reader on the wall.

***

"Oh god, I'm blind!" Chuck covered his face with the forearm of his gun hand. The sunlight on his face after three weeks in the bunker was brutal. He stiffened his knees to keep them from buckling and slowly his vision returned. Chuck scanned around the maintenance shaft he'd used to reach the surface and realized he was on top of a large hill.

Off in the distance, he could see other huge hills. He still had no idea where he was, but at least there was fresh air there. The ground sloped away to the east, and he spotted the winding pillar of smoke from the burning guard shack, then his eyes were pulled down to the handful of helicopters. Chuck squatted and started crabwalking down the slope, trying to keep his outline from being easily spotted in the early evening light. With the sun at his back, Chuck shouldn't have been to easy to spot as long as he didn't let himself get outlined by the sun on the top of the hill.

About halfway down the hill, Chuck stopped. It was only a hundred yards or so to the Ring commandos' helicopters. There were a handful of commandos left outside watching the helicopters. Now if only Sarah and whoever was with her would answer their radio. A hand clamped over his mouth.

"Shh. Don't freak out, baby." Came Sarah's harsh whisper. Chuck relaxed after a moment.

"How did you find me?" He whispered back. Sarah wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek.

"Did you forget about the GPS tracker I put in your shoulder?" She said.

"Yes." Chuck said. "Did I remember to tell you lately how creepy that was?"

Sarah chuckled softly. "Its not creepy, its sensible. The amount of trouble you get into, it's a wonder I didn't do it years ago."

"It really hurt too." Chuck said.

Sarah kissed his cheek again, then reached down to play with Lisa's hair briefly. "Here, I've got a bullet proof vest for you. Let me put Lisa in the carrier."

Sarah shrugged out of the converted rucksack and they juggled Lisa and the bulletproof vest awkwardly. She hugged Lisa to her chest and breathed in her scent, sighed and tucked her carefully in the armored rucksack.

"Sarah?" Chuck said softly. "A little help?" She looked up and grinned. Even after everything, he was still the same. He was trying to put it on upside down. It only took half a minute to get Chuck squared away.

"Put your hands out." She said, and slung the rucksack with Lisa in it on him backwards. It felt, horribly, like putting all her eggs in one basket, but if anyone was going to get shot it was going to be her, and so, Lisa went with Chuck. Thankfully Chuck was smart enough not to back-talk her."Okay. Now stay low and let me do all the shooting."

Chuck pulled her into a brief kiss and handed over his silenced submachinegun. "Here. I'll stick to tranq darts." Sarah nodded, handed over a couple spare clips, and bent to plant a kiss on Lisa's forehead.

Toward the bottom of the hill, the scrub brush gave way to small trees and more scrub brush, giving them decent cover. It was still fifty yards or so to the closest helicopter. The ring strike team had stationed four men by the blown in doors to the bunker complex, and another four waited in a loose huddle near the back of the CH-47 cargo Chinook.

Sarah waited for the attack helicopters orbit to take them out of sight around the hill before tapping Chuck on the shoulder. "Make for the closest Blackhawk baby. I'm right behind you. Run!" She said in a low whisper, but full of determination.

Chuck grabbed the baby-carrier in both hands to make sure Lisa was secure and not jostled around too much and sprinted for the helicopters. Sarah took a firing position on one knee, extending the MP-10 as far as the sling would allow and sighting in on the group of commandos near the door. They were closest to where Chuck would be running, but farther from Sarah--about seventy yards-- so it would be dicey as far as the range went. But the others had little chance of spotting him on the run. Sarah squeezed off a three round burst. One man went down, but hit in the thighs. Sarah groaned at her mistake. She'd forgot to take bullet drop into account. Damn rookie mistake.

The second burst took the wounded man's head in a cloud of pink, and she shifted fire, rippling off the rest of the magazine quickly, with only brief pauses to compensate for recoil. The ring commandos shouted into their tactical radios, but they didn't seem to have spotted Chuck, or cottoned on to her location. Most of the group at the crumpled blast doors was down, and Sarah was out of 10-mm ammunition, so she tossed the smg aside and flipped her M-4 off her back. The A-cog sight and the more powerful 5.56 mm nato rounds gave the carbine better accuracy at long range. Sarah flicked the selector switch to semi-automatic and walked in the strange rolling gait that would keep her accurate on the move.

The shorter range to the group of commandos only now reacting to the attack on their compatriots only made things simpler. She squeezed the trigger four times and four men went down, and then she sprinted after her husband.

Chuck was already in the cockpit by the time she caught up with him, two unconscious pilots laying in the dirt next to the blackhawk. Lisa was bawling. "Cover her ears!" Sarah said as she rolled into the cargo section. The blackhawks all had door mounted M134 7.62mm miniguns. Sarah slung her assault rifle out of the way and took up station on the door gun. The barrels were turning before Chuck had the chopper off the ground.

A three foot tongue of green flame spouted from the minigun with a sound like the hand of an angry god tearing a giant bolt of cloth in two. Casing shot out of the underside of the gun at a blistering 3000 rounds a minute. Sarah ran the stream of fire across the cockpit of the nearest blackhawk, then cursed under her breath. The attack choppers were on their way back. The gun could traverse most of the width of the open side door, but it wasn't designed for anti-aircraft work. She couldn't angle the gun up much beyond twenty degrees. She let off the firing stud for a moment, just the ringing in her ears and the sound of the electric motor spinning the barrels competing with the roar of the Blackhawk's turbojet engines.

"Up! We need to get up, Chuck!" She screamed.

"I see it." Chuck growled back and jammed the cyclic control to the redline. The Blackhawk shot up, and Sarah centered one of the Apaches in her sights. The one issue that Apache pilots had been complaining of ever since the model's introduction, was their light armor, and suceptibility to small arms fire. It wasn't any less armored than any other close attack aircraft, really, it just got a lot closer to the action than most. It also wasn't much _more _armored, and there wasn't a lot you could do to make bulletproof glass thinner.

3000 rounds a minute made short work of the first attack chopper's cockpit, and the helicopter tumbled down to crash in the employee parking lot. There wasn't a giant fireball, just an explosion of concrete dust and paint chips from the impact. Sarah eased off the minigun again. "Where's the other one? Do you see the other one?"

"He saw his friend bite it!" Chuck reported. "Ducked behind the hill to the Southwest. Where are we heading?"

"Just head north until I get my cell reception back and I can get the drop coordinates from Casey."

***

"This is Bird-dog 2! Bird-dog 1 is down. Repeat, down." The remaining attack chopper pilot growled into his headset. "Blackhawk 3 is compromised. Engaging with guns." Tracer fire from the twenty-five millimeter arced out and peppered the back half of the offending blackhawk.

"Negative, Negative! Check fire!" Came the word from command. "Check fire dammit. Our objective is in that chopper, and we need him alive."

"I hit them in the back quarter, but they're still airborne. Please advise."

"Pursue and report, but do not re-engage."

"Target losing altitude, command." Bird-dog 2 reported. "Heading 043, fifteen miles north of the LZ."

"Understood."

"Wait, no. They've made a landing." Bird-dog 2 cursed under his breath. "There's a black SUV waiting for them."

"Engage the SUV."

"Roger command." The 25mm autocannon made short work of what was probably a really nice Suburban. It disintegrated in a ball of flame. "The Target Blackhawk is moving again, heading west, bearing 133 now."

"Stay with them Bird-dog 2."

"Shit. They're losing control. Target is in a flat spin, going down. Target is down." The Blackhawk bellied in, but going much too fast. Its landing struts collapsed, the chopper rolled over, shedding snapped off rotor blades, and ended up in a dry creekbed. The fireball was slightly washed out in the evening sunlight.

"Target is dead, command. No one could have survived that."

***

Two Days Later: Ring HQ South Central United States

"Will we have access to the autopsy reports? It's a shame that we lost a resource like Carmichael. What happened exactly?"

"Only one of our units even reported engaging Carmichael. Bravo Subteam 2 lost communications with Bravo lead, then Carmichael took them down. After that, reports are sketchy, our surviving agent from that team didn't remember anything after Carmichael declared himself. What we do know, Carmichael and a blond CIA agent, probably his old handler somehow eluded our ground forces, escaped the Bunker facility and fought their way to one of our helicopters, while most of our men were engaged in the assault.

They used the stolen helicopter to take out one of our transport choppers as well as one of our attack assets. Our remaining attack asset opened fire before I could countermand them. It pursued, disrupting an attempt to change to ground transport. Carmichael's helicopter eventually crashed due to mechanical failure, probably from the damage sustained at takeoff, and exploded. No one on the chopper survived. We found three badly burned bodies on board, matching the descriptions of the joint CIA/NSA team that we had been tracking from Burbank. Agents Carmichael, Walker and the NSA man, Colonel Casey are all confirmed dead. We checked dentals as well as their DNA profiles straight from central records."

"Is it possible they faked their deaths, forged the DNA results somehow?"

"They had no warning of the attack on the facility. There simply wasn't time for them to orchestrate the immensely complicated legwork needed to fake this. They were on the ground for all of a minute."

"Very well. Keep tabs on the current intersect computer project, the last human intersect is dead. Close the Carmichael file. We were very close. Ah, well. At least the whole team is dead. They nearly gutted us the last fourteen months. I suppose this could have been worse for us. Thank you, Victor. We have your next assignment when you are ready."

"Yes sir. On the bright side, the sonic cannon was given its first successful field test."

The man in the center of the table sighed.

___

A/N 2: So have you ever read _any _fics where the Ring wins? You have now!

Just kidding. Cliffhangers are fun. For me.


	11. Chapter 11: Homecoming

Chapter 11: Homecoming

A/N: Super long chapter. Couldn't find a good place to split it up. Content advisory: brief highly suggestive themes.

Disclaimer: Don't own Chuck. Blah blah.

Casey's phone warbled and he answered it without glancing at the caller id. "Yeah Walker? Slow down. What! Okay, I'm..." Hang on. He read the coordinates off his GPS. "Time window? Well great."

He hung up and ran around behind the Suburban and opened the back. "Well, my cadaverous friends. Looks like you're needed a little earlier than planned. Casey put his phone on Speaker and dialed Beckman, then clipped the phone to his belt. "General, It's Casey. Change of plans."

"Situation report?"

"All bad. The lovebirds are in a damaged Blackhawk headed my way with an Apache on their asses." Casey grunted with effort and hauled the 5'9" blond Jane doe's body over his shoulder and a safe distance away from the SUV. The men were harder to move.

"I'll put the new files in place immediately." Beckman said. "And I'll reroute the relief team out of Fort Hood to your position."

"Negative General." Casey said, with Chuck's double over his shoulder. "We're only a few miles from town. We can hoof it. I hear the rotors now. I'll be in touch as soon as I can ma'am."

"Good luck, Colonel."

Casey stepped out and waved both hands over his head. The Blackhawk flared expertly enough into the landing that Casey was convinced it would be Walker behind the controls. He grunted when he spotted Bartowski in the cockpit, and hoisted the first body into the cargo area. "Ground floor, dead bodies, disgusting spy couples. Everybody out."

Sarah hopped down and ran over to the blond woman. "Spooky." She breathed and grabbed her double by an arm and a leg, hoisting her up into a fireman's carry and rushing back to toss the body in the helicopter. She staggered a little under the rotor wash.

"You just going to let your _husband_ do all the work, Bartowski?" Casey shouted over the engines.

"I know, I know. I'm the girl in my marriage. Real original, Casey." Chuck rolled his eyes and bounced Lisa gently, trying to quiet her. "You have a remote control for the Helicopter? Cause I don't know how much longer it'll hold together. I'd prefer to be a long way away when the fuel tanks go up."

"Please, Bartowski. Try to keep the idiotic comments to a mimimum." Casey said, hauling the last body over, and tossing Chuck some kind of techno-widget. "Make yourself useful. Go hook that into the flight computer." Casey started wedging the bodies into place so that they wouldn't fly out on impact. Chuck flashed. It was a 7AA-23, prototype wireless guidance module. The NSA really did have all the cool toys. The flash also gave him the know-how to install the thing, which was useful.

A few seconds later, the SUV suddenly crumpled inward fifty yards away with a strange sound like hail hitting a tin roof. After a second the gasoline took and there was a muffled thump of an explosion before the Ring Apache flew overhead. Casey hauled Chuck out of the helicopter by the scruff of the neck and half-dragged him over into the nearby line of heavy grass and scrub brush. Casey forced Chuck to sit down in the scrub brush for cover, and was quickly followed by Sarah and Casey. Sarah had her iPhone out, and was doing something fiddly with the touch screen. The Blackhawk jerked awkwardly into the air. "Huh." Chuck said. "There really is an App for everything." Sarah swiped her finger across the screen and the empty chopper jerked left into a banking turn and flew over the lip of the nearest hill.

Two minutes later, they felt the impact through the ground and spotted the smoke from the crash site, and Casey stood and dusted off the knees of his pants. "Well, there goes another 25 million dollars worth of taxpayer money, Bartowski. I hope you're happy."

"Thrilled. I assume our ground transport was supposed to be the Suburban over there now made up almost entirely of swiss cheese?"

Casey grunted. "I've got my Crown Vic at the motel in town. But it's kind of a hike. We'd better hurry if we want to make it by nightfall. That damn thing ever gonna stop crying?"

Sarah narrowed her eyes. "Watch your language."

Casey's grunt sounded vaguely hurt.

It was a long walk to Palestine, Texas, and Chuck couldn't help but be curious. "I don't mean to pry Casey. But, uh... you don't always drive around with dead body doubles for the three of us in the back, of your Suburban do you?"

Casey rolled his eyes. "Moron."

Sarah hooked an arm through his. "This was the plan I told you about. Sorry I never went into details. We were planning on smuggling the bodies into the Bunker in the next couple days, and staging an electrical fire, then we would all disappear, leaving the burned bodies behind. But this worked out even better. Beckman should be changing the files as we speak. There's no way they can know we were already planning this. The Ring had total tactical surprise on that raid, so they'll think we're done."

"Yeah, Bartowski." Casey said. "Never look a gift cadaver in the mouth."

"Maybe you should just stop giving people cadavers as gifts and we could kill two birds with one stone." Chuck said. Sarah laughed and kissed him on the cheek and put her head on his shoulder as they walked. Casey groaned. There were going to be like this all the time, weren't they?

"Disgusting." He muttered. But there was just the hint of a smile on his face. Just a hint though.

They didn't stay at Casey's motel that night. Casey only let them have time to stow their body armor and for Sarah to change into a spare set of civilian clothes. They didn't exactly suit her. It looked like Casey had just picked up the Female equivalent of his usual 'not on duty' threads. He insisted on everyone piling into the Crown Vic and driving an hour north east on Highway 155 to Tyler just to be safe. Chuck and Sarah sat with Lisa's armored baby carrier between them in the back, watching her sleep.

"Look what we did." Chuck whispered, stroking his daughter's golden hair.

"I know, right?" Sarah whispered back. "I could barely believe it when I saw her the first time."

***

"So, Charles Carmichael is dead. Sarah Walker is dead. John Casey is dead. But a lot of people know that Chuck Bartowski is a spy, and was dating a Sarah Walker, so... going back to Burbank permanently is a big problem security wise. A couple of weeks should be fine, but beyond that we need to be careful." Sarah said as they were exiting the Crown Vic in front of the Tyler Texas Holiday Inn.

"Can I tell Morgan?" Chuck mused.

"No!" Casey put in, darting inside and making his way to the check in counter. They were a little late for check in, but at least there was still someone at the desk. The Colonel had called ahead from the car.

"If you'd let me finish." Sarah said, biting off every word. She opened the door of the hotel lobby for him, because Chuck was unwilling to let go of his daughter for the foreseeable future. Sarah had felt a warmth growing in her heart just at the sight of them in the same car, so she wasn't much interested in taking her back. Yet. "Your new cover isn't really a cover. We're moving to the DC area, and you're taking a job as an analyst with the CIA, and yes... its going to come out that you're working for the government in some capacity, and most of your friends and your old coworkers are going to assume CIA. They're going to send someone around to do background interviews with pretty much everyone you know as part of your security clearance, mostly boilerplate stuff, but despite as creepy as they are, your coworkers are smart enough to figure that out."

"Oh god, they're going to talk to Jeff?"

"And Morgan, and Lester, and Big Mike and... well everybody."

"He's going to try to torpedo my security clearance so I have to work at the Buy More the rest of my life... they all are."

"Yes." Sarah said, nudging him over to Casey at the front desk to pick up their room keys. "Which is why I'm going to be doing a lot of _those_ interviews myself."

"So everybody's going to know you're CIA too?"

"Brunette me with old lady makeup and Jay Leno chin implants, yes. As far as everybody else is concerned I'm going to DC to become a housewife." She said. Casey handed off the room keys and they walked over to the elevators with him. "But I'll still be firearms current and your official CIA liason. Maybe I'll do some field work in DC, but not undercover, just some simple counter espionage surveillance with the FBI home office. But we won't know for sure until we get to Langley." The elevator doors opened and they walked in. "As often as I'm going to be knocked up in the next decade, my usefulness in the field will be drastically reduced."

Casey made a gagging noise. "I'm taking the stairs so I don't have to listen to anymore of that kind of talk, Walker."

Sarah glared at him for the 'Walker' comment and opened her mouth to correct him, but the doors shut.

"Uh-oh. Time out." Chuck said, making a T out of his hands around his armful of precious cargo. "Danger Will Robinson. Not that I don't want another kid or two, but I'm still getting used to this little hell-raiser we've got. How did we stay married for more than a year without talking about this?"

"Well, we were busy sneaking around or on the run from about six different intelligence agencies, that really took up a lot of our time." She grabbed him by the collar and nuzzled up against his cheek. "And the rest of the time you had me bent over the most convenient piece of furniture."

Chuck swallowed, and put his hands over Lisa's ears. She burbled happily and they exited the elevator. But he wouldn't be distracted."Uh, how many kids are we talking?"

"Or pinned to the bed, or the floor, or the kitchen table. I like it when you pin me to things." Sarah grinned and snaked her fingers into his hair.

"Are you avoiding the question by trying to make me maul you? How many kids do you want?"

"Why you want to practice for the next one?"

Chuck tugged at his collar. "Don't we have a meeting with Beckman we need to get to?"

"You're so cute when you're flustered." Sarah said, toying with the buttons of her black collared shirt with one hand and popping open their hotel room with the other.

"And did I get an answer on how many kids you want?"

Sarah glanced both ways down the hallway, closed the door firmly and finally turned back to face him. "I'm shooting for ten."

"TEN?"

"I want a big family." Sarah said, shrugging one shoulder and blushing faintly. "I only had one sister and she stayed with mom in the divorce, I was barely eight or nine. It was just me and dad, after that, and..." She sighed and leaned into him and waggled her fingers in Lisa's face. The littlest Bartowski babbled happily. "I don't want that for Lisa. I want to give her as many brothers and sisters as we can."

"Less than ten." Chuck said, glad to find a crib already set up for Lisa in the room. Casey's prep work was up to his usual high standards. "Please?"

"Eight would be acceptable." Sarah allowed.

"You say that now..." He set Lisa down reluctantly, turned back to her and grunted at the seductive smirk she was wearing. It was about all Sarah was wearing anymore. How the hell had she gotten out of her clothes that fast? He swallowed and tried not to be noticeably distracted. "How are we going to put eight kids through college on two CIA salaries? And where are we going to _keep_ them all?"

Sarah's smirk widened and she tugged him away from Lisa's playpen, pressed herself up against him. "You forgot about my nest egg didn't you?"

"That's still a lot of kids."

She spun and shoved him expertly back onto the bed. Chuck couldn't help but drink in the sight of her. He hadn't really had the chance before to study the shape of her after her pregnancy. That afternoon in his room in the bunker, they'd been eye to eye most of the time. She had gotten her figure most of the way back fairly quickly, but he was certain it had taken a brutal workout regimen. Sarah waved a hand in front of her bosom, pulling him from his daydream. "Sorry." He said, tearing his eyes away and back up to her face.

She was grinning ear to ear. "How about we'll renegotiate after four. But like I said, we're going to need a lot of practice." And then she pounced, even though they were going to be late meeting back up with Casey for the briefing with Beckman and the DDO. Chuck could already hear the one liner about them smelling like sex, but at the moment he couldn't really make himself care.

***

They drove to Dallas and flew commercial on the first flight they could book. It got them into Burbank early the next day and Chuck and Sarah got settled in at their temporary safehouse before noon thanks to the time difference. It was a touch odd. The CIA or the NSA, one of the two, had sent people over to her old place and boxed everything up and shipped it over to the safehouse. But Chucks things were nowhere to be found, oddly enough. He wondered vaguely if that was Sarah's work or just the possibility of Morgan filing a police report if his missing bro's stuff disappeared. Chuck didn't have any real fear that the CIA would be discovered in the process of removing his belongings, but still.

Sarah was glad to see a couple of old photographs that she hadn't had digital copies of. The one of her in her Princess Leia outfit from that one Halloween was a personal favorite of his, though Sarah felt like she should make grumpy noises about him keeping it on display now that they had wedding pictures that didn't have to be hidden in safety deposit boxes under assumed names. Chuck was busy changing diapers and making a long and rambling complaint about toxic fumes that made her grin, while she unpacked some of her old clothes.

For about an hour they sat on the couch and lazed it up, Sarah put her head in his lap set Lisa on her chest. Chuck seemed to be having trouble deciding which blond head of hair to play with, but he had two hands. Reluctantly, she pulled his hand away from her tresses and looked at his watch. Sarah frowned, jutted her bottom lip out. "I should probably get going." She said finally and sat up. "Here you go."

Chuck cradled Lisa carefully and rubbed noses with his daughter, and Sarah felt her lip curl at the sight. She shook herself roughly and headed with great difficulty into the bedroom to change. By the time she was changed, and came back into the living room, Chuck was laying on his stomach on the floor in front of Lisa, pulling funny faces. Lisa looked so happy Sarah had to fight the urge not to swoop in and interject herself. That smile of hers was going to be hard to say no too. God she just wanted to squeeze her, but Chuck needed time to bond with their daughter too.

Lisa made a funny burbling noise when Chuck rolled over onto his back, and she pushed herself up on her arms to look at him. That was almost a real laugh from their daughter. Sarah leaned against the door frame with the keys to their rental car in her hand watching them with a goofy smile on her face for much longer than she should have. Her watch alarm beeped and she sighed and pried herself away from the Chuck and Lisa show. It was an amazing show, and there were no repeats if she missed an episode. But, she had a mission to complete.

***

Sarah turned into the doctors' lounge as if she did it every day. Her scrubs were the old pair she'd liberated from the nurse back in Cottonwood. She knew keeping them was a good idea. The old blood stains only served to reinforce her cover. Luckily no one was in just then, so her breaking and entering was that much less noticeable.

Cracking a combination lock was mostly about feel, and Sarah's fingers flew over the dial briefly. She didn't even bother putting her ear to the dial of the cheap Masterlock, but despite her seeming lack of concentration, in barely a minute, she had Ellie's locker open. Mission accomplished.

***

Ellie trudged into the doctors' lounge at six, completely exhausted and icky feeling. There had been a six par pileup on the Five that had brought in half a dozen trauma victims all within twenty minutes of each other. She hadn't had a moment to think, let alone sit down and worry about Chuck and Sarah, in what seemed like weeks. All she wanted to do right at that moment was go home and collapse in bed. Hopefully Devon's double shift had worn him out as well. Ellie didn't know if she could handle an 'Awesome' evening just then.

She turned to her locker, eyes crossing a little in fatigue as she grabbed the lock. Her vision cleared almost immediately. The dial was at 0. Lately, she'd been leaving the dial at 45, the date of her wedding to Aw-- Devon. Ellie shook her head, somebody had been messing with her locker.

When she finally got up the nerve to pop the lock open, Ellie arched an eyebrow. There was an envelope taped to the cieling so that it hung down in front of her coat, with her name on the front in big block letters. Her heart hammering, Ellie snatched the letter and tore open the envelope to find a typewritten note.

Montoni's 8:00. Bring Devon

Reservation is under Burton

--C&S

Ellie's mouth was still hanging open when Devon looped an arm around her waist and kissed the side of her head. "What's up babe? You're gonna start catching flies." Ellie wordlessly held the brief note up to Devon. She turned in his arms a little to get a glance at his reaction. He arched an eyebrow, frowning. "Whoa."

"Whoa?" She said. "That's it? They disappear for almost a year, with barely a word, and I get 'Whoa?'"

"What?" Devon said. "I just took out a guy's heart with my bare hands, babe. "

Ellie furrowed her brow. "Why weren't you wearing gloves?"

"Figuratively." Devon shrugged. "Wait that's the problem you have with me taking out a dude's heart?"

"Did you put it back?"

"Of course."

"Then what's the problem?"

Devon huffed. "Nothing, it was just a really awesome surgery. Really intense." He kissed the side of Ellie's neck.

"We have dinner reservations, Dr. Woodcombe." She said, flapping the letter at him. "Don't start something you can't finish."

"If you say so, Dr. Woodcombe." Devon said, giving the other side of her neck a brief smooch. "But I have it on good authority that these hands can work miracles."

Ellie squirmed free and smacked him on the shoulder. "We barely have enough time to get cleaned up and over there before our reservation, even if we double up in the shower. Move it mister."

"Awesome."

"No, not awesome. Efficient. There will be no funny business."

"Aw come on babe."

"Do I need to remind you of a certain hot-tub incident?"

"Not Awesome, babe. Really Not Awesome."

***

1912 PDT

"Sarah, we have to goooo." Chuck said, struggling halfheartedly to keep her wandering hands at bay. "The reservation is in less than an hour, and we need to--"

"YOU need to shut up and stop struggling." Sarah growled, attacking his belt buckle despite his weakening protests. Her hands swooped into his pants, fingers sliding up and down the length of him. "If you're in such a rush, there's no time for the bedroom." She mused. "I'll just have to improvise."

Chuck's eyes widened as Sarah yanked his pants down and squatted right in the living room of their safehouse. His shock only lasted for a moment, quickly replaced by the usual mix of emotions that ran through him when Sarah got aggressive like this; disbelief that this could actually be happening, that she gave every appearance of greatly enjoying the way he tasted; wonder that he could have somehow gotten lucky enough to marry the greatest woman in the world; of course, pleasure at the physical sensations she was giving to him; and also of course, a healthy dose of guilt that it was so one-sided. Coupled with the knowledge that they barely had time for this without being terribly late, let alone with the quarter of an hour he would feel honor bound to spend reciprocating added in, his guilt had him half relieved when the baby woke up and started bawling from the other room. Well, maybe more like a third relieved. He was definitely conflicted about it.

Sarah glared up, fixing him in place with her eyes. He knew that look. Somehow this was his fault. Then the phone rang, and she pulled back and sighed, leaving him standing with his pants down around his ankles. "Go answer the phone. I've got Lisa."

Chuck managed to get his pants back up and still got to the phone on the third ring. After a few seconds of high pitched noise like an old modem as the secure phones synced up, Casey's voice came through the receiver. "Hope I'm not interrupting anything."

"You're lucky you didn't call ten seconds earlier, or you'd have woken up the baby."

Chuck could almost hear the shudder that ran through the Colonel at the thought of upsetting New-Mom-Sarah. "What's up Casey?"

"The General and the DDO say they don't want you wandering loose in LA, so I'm going to have you two under surveillance again this week. Nothing intrusive, but I thought you and Walker should know."

Chuck cleared his throat.

"What? You okay, Bartowski?"

"I'm fine Casey, just. You're going to want to watch the 'Walker' talk around Sarah. She gets... scary when people don't use her legal name. Broken arms scary."

"What? Oh, right. But I can't call her Bartowski, can I, Bartowski? That's your name. It would be too confusing."

"You could always call me Chuck, and her Sarah?"

"Ha. I never knew you were a comedian, Bartowski."

"I tell jokes all the time. Funny ones."

"Stop it, you're killing me." Casey said in a flat monotone. "Just watch the PDA, Bartowski, I don't want to have to wash puke out of the upholstery again.

"PDA? We were in the living room."

"Damn it Bartowski! I didn't want to _know_ that! Just tell me you weren't on the couch. It'll cost the taxpayers a fortune to have it disinfected."

***

"Is that Casey?" Sarah called from the hallway. Chuck glanced over only to see bare breasts, one of them obscured by their daughter's mop of curly hair. Chuck made a choking sound, transfixed as always by the sight of her, but with little Lisa going wild on her dinner like that, Chuck's usually very physical reaction to even partial frontal Sarah was replaced by something entirely different.

"D'awww." He said. "Where's my camera. I need a picture of this."

"Bartowski what the hell's going on over there." Casey's voice grumbled from the handset, and was ignored.

"You can't be serious!" Sarah said a touch shrilly, one hand darting up from where she was cradling her daughter to cover the exposed flesh. "My boobs're hanging out."

"Damn you Bartowski!" Casey bellowed. "I don't want to hear about you and Walker's sexcapades dammit!"

"But look at her go to town, Sarah." Chuck protested. "She's got a double handful, like she's eating a big honkin' cheeseburger or something. Its adorable."

Sarah snorted derisively, doing strange and wonderful things to her bosom. "I'm well aware of your daughter's voracious appetite. I'm just not as thrilled with the prospect of another five or six months of this as you seem to be."

"We could change to bottles if you wanted." Chuck said diplomatically, Casey still buzzing in his ear.

"Oh sweet merciful Reagan! Bartowski, please let me out of this conversation. We have serious things to discuss or I'd have hung up long ago."

"No." Sarah said with an air of finality as she sat on the couch. "Breast feeding is best for the baby, so breast fed she will be. Is Casey still on the phone?"

"What? Oh, right. Are you still there Casey?"

"I'm going to kill you for making me listen to that, Bartowski."

"Uh, yes. Casey's still on the phone, Hon."

"Agh! No pet names! You're both disgusting!" Casey shouted.

Chuck held the phone a foot away from his ear. "Give me the phone." Sarah said.

She juggled the phone and her daughter with an ease that startled Chuck nearly as much as it did her. It was almost instinctive. She rolled her eyes at the big doofy grin that erupted across her husband's face as she wedged the phone between her shoulder and her ear. Sarah knew that if he kept that up, she'd be wearing a matching smile before too much longer.

Chuck snatched a towel from the laundry basket and draped it around Sarah's shoulders and tucked the ends up and around Lisa's feet, to keep them warm. He nodded to himself as Sarah listened to what seemed a long-ish speech from the Colonel.

"Uh-huh. Fine. Sure." Sarah said at intervals. "You're one to talk, Sugar Bear. No, Chuck didn't tell me, Ilsa did." She barked a laugh. "Well, that's what you get for eavesdropping. I'd be louder if we had a babysitter.... Yeah, once I'm done feeding the baby and dressed. Of course I'm topless... Casey, you _do_ know where breast milk _comes_ from, don't you?" Sarah chortled and nodded to Chuck. "He hung up, could you take the phone?"

"What did Casey have to say that was so important?"

"Oh, nothing really, you know how he gets about surveillance. He just wanted to say where all the audio bugs are so that I'll know to shut them off before..." Sarah gave an attempt at the Bartowski Eyebrow dance her level best. Chuck laughed and fell onto the couch next to her. He looped an arm around her shoulders and proceeded to tickle his daughter gently. A tiny pudgy hand slapped his fingers away from her meal. He tried again and Lisa grabbed his finger to keep his hand out of the way. Sarah leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder as they watched their baby gorge herself. Chuck checked his watch.

"I'll go get you a bra and that blue top with the little buttons, if they found it."

"No, sweetie. The green one with the white lace and the stripes. The blue one doesn't fit over the milk bottles any more."

"The what?" Chuck smirked. Sarah cocked her head and frowned at him and let her eyes fall to first one breast and then the other. She quirked an eyebrow expectantly. He went into the bedroom laughing softly to himself at that one.

***

"They're late!" Ellie fumed. "Almost a year without so much as a postcard, secret invitations to a pizza place of all things, and they don't even have the courtesy to show up on time?"

"Calm down, Babe." Devon said, patting her arm. "It's gotta be risky for them coming back to LA, if they're still..." He paused and looked around the restaurant. It was fairly sparse, with only a couple of other tables occupied, and most of those across the room. "You know," He said, lowering his voice before continuing. "On the lam."

Ellie considered this for a moment. "You don't think they got caught do you?" She said, coming to the worst case assumption faster than she expected.

"Nah, Babe. They're probably just casing the place, making sure there's no surveillance team watching us."

"Surveillance team?" Ellie echoed. That was something she hadn't considered. Even after Sarah's letter almost a year ago, before the disappearance, she'd had a hard time coming to grips with the whole situation. Devon hadn't been a great help, only giving her the barest of bare bones accounts of the two or three missions he'd been inadvertently involved in. "Are we still under surveillance?"

"Probably not," Devon said, thinking about it. "Not since John Casey moved out."

"Well that's a relief." Ellie said. "I still don't see what could be keeping them. It's almost eight twenty, do you think we should order? I'm starved."

***

"Okay, can we go now Casey?" Chuck said in the surveillance van. He wasn't sure, but it looked to be the same one they had used before on so many missions.

"I still think you should wear earpieces." The Colonel said, one last time.

Sarah grunted. "Not on your life. NSA goons spying on my family time is a thing of the past, Casey. No offense. If Chuck flashes on anyone at the completely harmless, family oriented pizza place, we'll call you and you can come in guns blazing to rescue us."

"You're not packing?" Casey said, concerned.

"I am _packing_ an eleven-pound-six-week-old-human-baby-girl, John Casey!" Sarah said angrily. "That is _plenty_!"

"Yeah, but..." Casey struggled for a moment with how to phrase his objection. "I mean, it's you. Not even a throwing knife?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. "Yes, I have one throwing knife in an ankle holster where Lisa has no earthly chance of getting at it. But I'm not carrying a gun and a baby at the same time. And neither are you if you want to hold my daughter."

"Casey, I've got a tranq gun in a shoulder rig on the one in a billion, off chance anything insane happens. We'll be fine." Chuck glanced at his watch, "We're late as it is, and you know how Ellie gets about punctuality."

"Alright move it." Casey said. "Operation Dinner with the Awesomes is a go."

"Do you have the diaper bag Chuck?" Sarah asked, slinging Lisa across her chest in the baby carrier. "You have everything?"

"Yeah, come on." Chuck said, helping Sarah down the big step out of the van. He grinned evilly. "Stay in the van, Casey."

Casey scowled and shook his finger at him, no comeback ready to hand, as Chuck slammed the sliding door closed in his face.

***

Ellie stood up instantly when she saw Chuck round the corner into the back part of the dining room. She seemed to teleport over to him, not bothering with the intervening space, with dodging all the tables between them. Suddenly she was crushing him in a bear hug. "You're okay. Thank god little brother I was so worried! Why are you late?" She paused, looking around behind him. "Where's Sarah? Oh no! Did she get caught?" Ellie said in a hoarse whisper. Devon finally managed to catch up to his wife and with an obviously practiced touch on her shoulder, got Ellie to release Chuck from the death-hug.

"What? No, Sarah's fine, she just needed to hit the ladies. And I need to give you a heads up. No squealing when you see her."

"What, why what's going on?" Ellie glanced at Devon, who seemed to be grinning ear to ear. What did he know that she didn't. She scanned around for whatever it was.

"Awesome, bro." He said, putting out his fist for Chuck to bump.

"What's going on!" Ellie demanded.

Chuck glanced over his shoulder. "Oh, here's Sarah. And..." Chuck said, drawing the word out unnecessarily before stepping aside and stretching his hands out with a flourish. "May I present?" Ellie's eyes went open as wide as they could go, and her eyebrows climbed up her forehead as Chuck slipped an arm around Sarah's shoulders. "Lisa Eleanor Bartowski." Sarah had a hold of one of Lisa's tiny hands, making their daughter wave at her aunt.

"Surprise." She said.

"Oh my god!" Ellie exclaimed, moving to hug Sarah, but stopped, her arms held wide as she thought better of squishing her niece and her sister in law in a hug at that particular moment. It was inevitably, absolutely, _going_ to happen, just later when the baby was strong enough to survive the experience. "You guys! How could you keep something like this a secret!"

Sarah grinned wanly, pointing at herself awkwardly around her bundle of Lisa. "Hi. Have you met me? Secrets are kind of my business. Besides, the NSA was actively hunting for us. Any communication between us would have tipped them off."

"Was?" Ellie said hopefully.

"Yeah, sis." Chuck said, disengaging from Sarah so Ellie could safely hug him again, which she promptly did, but then pulled away.

"Chuck, what the hell? Is that a gun?"

He felt his shoulder rig absently, smoothed his coat. "Relax. It's just a tranquilizer. Devon, back me up here."

"Oh, yeah babe. Chuck is deadly with that thing... So to speak." Devon shrugged. "One time he took me on a mission, Chuck took out like six dudes at once."

Sarah hissed at them. "Just because certain people don't have problems with us anymore doesn't mean we should be broadcasting this stuff to the whole restaurant, Devon."

Devon paled and put his hands up to placate her. "Sorry, sorry. You're right of course Sarah. Maybe we should go back to the table?" Sarah nodded and Devon grabbed Ellie and started for the table without another word.

"Devon, what's up?" Ellie said, arching an eyebrow at her husband. "You're acting weird."

"You never saw her in action, Babe." Devon said. "That was one scary lady, before she got knocked up. Tack some maternal instincts on top of what's already there." He shuddered. "Ellie, do not make her angry. Please."

Ellie glanced over at Sarah and Chuck, walking leisurely behind them. Sarah looked about as scary as a house cat, beaming down at her daughter and playing with the wispy straw colored curls atop her head. "Yeah, she's a killer."

"I'm glad we understand each other." Devon said, and Ellie just stared at him for a moment as he held her chair out for her.

"So, did you guys order yet?" Chuck asked, following Awesome's example after a pointed look from Sarah. "Or were you waiting for us?"

"We waited." Ellie said, a touch accusingly, and Devon stepped on her foot. "Ow, Devon what the hell?"

"Ixnay abybay." He whispered out the side of his mouth.

Sarah and Chuck both looked at him oddly, eyebrows arched in weirdly similar fashion. It was an expression they usually reserved for Morgan. "Pig latin?" Chuck said finally. "That's the best code you can come up with for the CIA's best? And her husband?" Sarah rolled her eyes and smiled fondly at that last part.

"Okay, Devon. What's up?" She said, "You're acting jittery."

"Don't kill me?"

Sarah covered Lisa's ears and frowned at Devon. "I'd never do that. You're family."

"Oh. Right."

When the waiter came by, Devon started to order their usual. "Can we get a supreme and a vegetarian, no olives."

Sarah cleared her throat. "Actually. Can we get extra olives?" Ellie raised an eyebrow.

"You sure?" Chuck said. "Have you had olives since you had Lisa? You might not like them anymore."

"What's going on." Ellie asked, confused.

Sarah shrugged. "Crazy pregnancy cravings. I like olives now."

"Half with, half without on the veggie pizza." Chuck said to the waiter. "Just in case." Sarah grinned and hugged his arm.

Lisa tried to reach up for the pizza with one hand, Sarah laughed and pulled the slice away from her. "No baby. No big girl food 'til you have teeth."

"If she's hungry..." Chuck started, but Sarah just rolled her eyes for what had to be the thousandth time since being reunited with the love of her life.

"Chuck, I fed her before we left, all of thirty minutes ago. She's just curious." She leaned in close and whispered the rest, "_And_ I'm not whipping out the twins in the middle of a restaurant no matter how you beg."

"Okay. Sorry. She's just a little more animated than usual right now, so I thought maybe she was hungry or something."

"Actually," Sarah said, bending to sniff. "Thought so. Hand me the diaper bag."

"I can take her if you want." Chuck said, holding out his hands, but Sarah stared daggers at him and stood abruptly.

"Diaper bag." She demanded, snatching it from him and making her way toward the ladies room. Chuck scratched his head. Should he know what that was about?

"So." Chuck said. "Ellie, I know, asking you not to squeal was really hard on you. If you want to give it a try now, while Lisa's probably out of earshot?"

Ellie sighed. "No thanks, I'll pass. I don't want to risk crying baby in a public place." She shuddered. "My worst nightmare. Except for that one where I'm married to Morgan." Ellie paused thoughtfully. "I just have to ask. Why didn't you two wait? Having a baby on the run can't have been easy."

Chuck shrugged. "Uh, birth control mixup. But I'm glad. Don't bring it up around Sarah. She gets a little touchy on the subject. Anyway, what about you guys? Any little woodcombes in the works?"

Devon nearly choked on his pizza. "Uh, not yet bro." He glanced at Ellie with a glint of panic in his eye. "Uh, right babe?"

Ellie winked so Devon couldn't see it, sitting next to her, but Chuck could. "Well, I was putting off telling you until Sarah and Chuck got here, but..."

Devon looked like a truck had just hit him. His mouth dropped open in shock, but no words came out.

"Breathe Devon." Ellie said, and Chuck burst out laughing.

"That was evil, El."

"What?" Devon finally said. "Evil? Ellie what's going on?"

"I'm not pregnant." She said. "I was just having some fun with you."

"Not awesome Babe." Devon said. "We can't afford a kid right now. After the new year we can start trying if I get that associate chief job and you get that fellowship at USC. That's what we talked about."

She patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. "Devon, I know." Ellie cocked her head to one side, following that thought through to its logical end. "Wait, how did you and Sarah stay ahead of the search. How could you afford everything... I assume you had a house, cars. Prenatal screenings, doctor visits? What did you do for money?"

Chuck grinned sheepishly. "That's really Sarah's story to tell, or not tell as the case will probably be." He shrugged. "Short version is Sarah has a pretty awesome start on our nest egg, and college tuition for the kids."

Ellie beamed and arched an eyebrow at him on that one. "Kids? So... wait. Oh god, don't tell me she's pregnant again already?"

"No, no. What? No." Chuck said, getting a little flustered. "No way, we're still adjusting to life with one lil rugrat. But we did finally talk about it a couple weeks ago. The love of my life has babies on the brain." When he said it, he couldn't help but let loose a goofy smile at the thought.

"Uh oh," Sarah exclaimed, coming back from the bathroom with a groggy looking baby girl in the sling across her chest. "I know that smile. Chuck's talking about baby plans. What did he tell you?"

"Nothing, I promise, I was stalling for time." He said. "Really, they were grilling me about our finances, and whether you were pregnant again. I swear it was worse than that time we all got tortured by that scary lady from... those... bad people." Chuck stopped suddenly and put his lips up to Sarah's ear, blocking Ellie and Devon's view of his lips with a cupped hand. "Can we tell them about Fulcrum? I keep forgetting how much they know."

Sarah rolled her eyes, and shook her head vehemently. "Sorry guys, no details. And Cole was the only one that actually got tortured, Chuck. If I remember correctly, you fainted and knocked your chair over."

"Hey that was my _move_. You told me to try to pass out. And she had a really big needle. That was all part of the plan."

Sarah twined her fingers through his, and squeezed. "I was just teasing, Chuck. I know you're a big strong macho man. I have the tapes to prove—" She cut off, blushing and cut her eyes at Ellie and Devon, cleared her throat. "Anyway. What's up in medicine?"

Devon grinned, and put his fist out for Chuck to bump. "Nice work, bro. Filming the bedroom is a bold choice." Ellie slapped his fist bump down before Chuck could figure out if it was a good idea to go for it in the first place.

"Devon!" Ellie hissed, still remembering somehow to keep her voice down around the baby. She blushed nearly as crimson as Sarah at the whole debacle.

"I think you're getting the wrong idea sis, you too Devon." Chuck said. Sarah put her head in her hands, in disbelief. She couldn't believe this was happening. "Wait. Sarah, you don't want me to say anything, I won't. We'll just move along. New topic everybody."

Sarah shook her head. "Tell them, I'd rather they know the truth than whatever Ellie's imagining happened. And leave out the details of our sex life, if you want our sex life to continue."

"Okay..." Chuck said. "It's not as weird as it seems. I got caught and put in a secret underground bunker, Sarah got a job undercover as one of the guards. She looks really cute in uniform, and so, one thing led to another. They had fourteen cameras in my rooms, and then the night we... ahem. They'd installed a new one. So, when Sarah disabled the cameras she missed one. We only figured it out after. We had to steal the security tapes before we left."

"That's not _weird _to you guys?" Devon laughed.

"Oh, Sarah, that's awful." Ellie said, glaring at the Captain. "Everybody saw the tape?" Sarah growled something into her hands. "What?"

"Tell her." Sarah growled again, this time intelligibly.

Chuck scratched behind his ear. "Uh, no. Just the one who was on duty that night. Uh, she kind of had a crush on me."

Sarah raised her head. "Tell her all of it if you're going to tell it."

"You can chime in too sweetie." Chuck said. Sarah shook her head. "Fine. Uh, they caught me and told me Sarah had died and Lisa had been stillborn, so this guard who had the crush on me was kind of... possessive when Sarah got there."

"OH MY GOD!" Ellie exclaimed, missing most of the point. Lisa stirred but didn't wake up. "Sorry. Why would they do something like that to you? Tell you your family was dead?"

"Well, I had disabled the NSA team they had watching me, and escaped from the hospital and taken Lisa with me, so they couldn't use letting me in to see him as leverage to get Chuck to cooperate." Sarah explained. "In a situation like that, inability to produce proof of life is as bad as proof of death, so they figured what the hell. So this... person... thought that when I came in, looking quite a bit like Chuck's 'dead' wife. Well, she got up in my business about 'taking advantage' of him."

"Sarah, it sounds like." Ellie started, then changed tactics. "If you really _were_ dead and they were trying to use your image to make Chuck do something, wouldn't you have wanted this woman to be on the lookout?"

Sarah glared at Ellie for a moment. "But I wasn't dead, and she was watching like a hawk. We couldn't so much as hold hands, and then she was the one who saw us on tape? God I could have killed the bitch."

"Sarah." Chuck said. And Sarah went crimson, glancing down to make sure Lisa was still asleep. She looked at Chuck guiltily, such sorrow in her eyes that he just sighed and kissed her on the cheek.

"Anyway..." Sarah went on, fighting a blush. "We kind of got off on a weird tangent there. We're not just back. We're back with a reason."

"Oh?"

"Yeah." Chuck put in. "We want you and Devon to be Lisa's Godparents."

The Drs. Woodcomb exchanged a quick glance and said almost immediately in unison. "Of course we will."

"Great." Sarah said. "That kind of brings us to the next item on the agenda."

"There's an agenda?" Chuck asked in mock-surprise. Sarah rolled her eyes at him with a grin.

"Anyway." She said. "We're moving to DC in a couple of weeks, just enough time for the 'official' CIA background checks to clear, and for Chuck to say a real goodbye to everybody."

"How are you going to explain the yearlong disappearance. We didn't get any word on what to say when you and Chuck just dropped off the face of the earth." Ellie said, frowning. "You'd better have a more believable explanation than decapitating the bear."

"You're never going to let me live that down, are you Babe?" Devon sighed. Ellie grinned and shook her head.

"My dad got sick in St. Louis, I had to go right away, and Chuck raced to the airport after me. He broke his phone in the rush, and then he wouldn't let me go without proposing. One thing led to another and all of a sudden we were Mr. and Mrs. Bartowski."

"Still doesn't explain why we didn't hear from you for a year." Ellie said.

"His new job does." Sarah shrugged. "The training usually takes a few months at least."

"What new job?"

"I'm going to work for the CIA."

"No cover, bro?"

"As an analyst. We don't get covers, Devon. Just unlisted numbers and addresses."

"And what about Sarah?"

"Well, I'm retiring from the Yogurt Industry to have all of Chuck's babies."

"All?" Ellie said, finally back to the topic she really wanted to be on.

"I want eight, but Chuck has this silly notion that we should stop at four." Sarah said.

Devon had been taking a pull of his beer and spewed a mouthful onto the table. "Eight!" He said weakly. "Dude? That must be one hell of a nest egg, bro."

They chatted for a while still, finishing both pizzas and catching each other up on their lives for the past year. It was almost like old times. But it still felt like an ending.

A/N: Not quite _the _ending yet. Just a pair of epilogues with Morgan and the General left. Back to the salt-mines for me. More papers to grade.


	12. Epilogue

A/N: So, Beckman is a human being. Surprise!

Disclaimer: I don't own Chuck. /Boilerplate.

Epilogue I: Ft. Meade 0100 EST

Beckman and Deputy Director Myers were looking over the current applicant pool. Ft. Meade was always running, around the clock, just like CIA headquarters in Langley, but it was an odd time of day for two such highly placed intelligence officers to be up and about, much less hiding in what amounted to a broom closet.

Still, there was work to be done, and as conspicuous as their secret meetings would be if their security details knew about them, both spies had been exceedingly mindful of operational security. It had taken Beckman longer to ditch her security than Myers, but then the man had only just graduated to big boy pants from fieldwork. Only two people knew the true nature of this project, and though the number would eventually grow, Beckman was confident that Walker and Bartowski could be trusted. She mentally berated herself. The Bartowskis—Beckman shook her head, she was never going to get used to that—would bring the grand total of people in this special access group with knowledge of the full scope of the operation.

"What about this one?" Myers said, sliding the folder around on the card table. "Two years marine force recon, aced most of the aptitude tests."

"Most?" Beckman said. "What about Fleming's tests? Image retention?"

"Low eighties." Myers pointed out the relevant scores.

She grunted. "Put him on the maybe pile. My only concern here is that we don't fry our subjects brains like Fulcrum did at Meadow Branch. How close are Manoosh and his team to completion?"

"Still a few months. But that should give my newest instructors time to prepare the volunteers for upload." Myers sighed. "This is pointless, Diane."

"How do you mean?"

"This test of Fleming's we're using. Its designed for two purposes, and he's not in any condition to explain what an 83 means versus the 98 Chuck scored eight years ago at Stanford." Myers shook his head. "We need numbers you and I can understand, quantifiable benchmarks."

"I can see the logic, Bill. But if Bartowski's our baseline, we should probably get him under lock and key before we start thinking about new test procedures so that—"

"Oh no you don't Diane." The Deputy Director for Operations said. "No more bunkers. That was the deal. I'm just surprised either one of them is willing to speak to you after this debacle."

"I did what had to be done." Beckman protested. "Keeping that information safe is my highest priority."

Myers grin didn't reach his eyes. "That information happens to be in the head of an American citizen, and not just that, the husband of one of my best agents. You might have convinced Graham that what the Select Intelligence Committee doesn't know won't hurt them, but I for one would like to stay out of Federal prison."

"You're being ridiculous." Beckman said. "Worst case we would be fired and put in bunkers ourselves."

"I'm being prudent." Myers said. "Did you learn anything at all from waking up with Sarah _Bartowski_ holding a gun to your head?"

"Let's get back to work." She grated. Of course she had learned, and next time, she would just have to throw Sarah in the bunker with him. Objectively, protective custody was still the best option if they couldn't replicate what Orion had done in removing the Intersect. It wasn't _her_ fault if no one else could see past their emotions. She wasn't heartless. Chuck had done too much for his country for her to even contemplate a termination order anymore. And Diane had felt like _shit_ having to lock him away, even briefly. She'd barely been able to get the lie about the deaths out when it had become necessary.

Chuck and Sarah and that beautiful baby girl really did deserve to just be left alone, but the security of the entire _country_ was at stake. Why was she the only one who could see that anymore? Beyond the new physical capabilities of the Intersect 2.0, Chuck still had hundreds of terabytes of priceless defense secrets and clandestine intelligence stuffed up in his head. If their enemies got their hands on those files, General Beckman shuddered to think of the potential cost in lives. How could she have put potentially millions of lives at risk for the freedom of one man, and ever looked at herself in the mirror again? If no one else had the stomach to do what was necessary the next time, well, Diane Beckman wasn't going anywhere. God she hoped there wasn't a next time. "We need to finish going through these files. And this next Marine of yours is too old. Too big of a chance he's already come into contact with someone in the Ring."

"What?" Myers said. "He's barely three years out of OCS. Do you want to start recruiting them out of highschool?"

"Graham did just that with your fair haired girl." Beckman mused. "We could certainly slip this new test you have in mind into the SATs without much problem. Cast a wider net. You're the one always saying we need to look to the future."

Myers thought about it. "Do you know anyone over at the College Board?" He said at last. "Our agent there just retired last spring."

* * *

Epilogue II: Casa Woodcomb 2300 PST

"So, Morgan's cell number still the same?"

Ellie rolled her eyes. "Yes." She said. "You really want to do this over the phone?"

"Actually I was going to text him."

"Oh no you don't." Ellie said. "I'm the one who's had to deal with his 'where's chuck,' 'why doesn't chuck call,' 'waa, Chuck's probably dead in a ditch somewhere,' whining for the last year. You at least need to drive down to the Buymore and talk to him in person. I don't want to deal with the sappy emotional reunion on my front stoop."

"Oh god. Sarah? You want to come for moral support?"

"No way." She said from the sofa, stretching to massage her feet. I just want to curl up and go to sleep. "Do you mind Ellie?"

"That's fine Sarah. We have a guest room set up."

"Ok." She paused for a moment. "Hey, Chuck. No staying out all night with Morgan. That was okay when we were dating, but you have a wife to come home to. Make sure he knows it too. In fact." She stood, holding Lisa out to him. "Take your daughter. She'll need to be fed again in two or three hours, which will give you an ironclad excuse to leave."

"You sure?" Chuck asked. "You were pretty super overprotective when I wanted to take diaper duty at the restaurant."

"I know." She shrugged. "And I realize now how irrational I was being."

Chuck cradled their daughter carefully in his arms. She looked like she was fading fast. "If you're sure. I don't want to turn around and see you invading the Buymore all decked out in tactical gear to rescue her or something."

"Go have fun." Sarah said as Chuck was putting Lisa into her car seat. "And only tell him about my CIA status, he doesn't need to know about..." She glanced at Ellie, who didn't appear to be listening. "Anything else. Like we talked about, remember."

"I know, Sarah." Chuck whispered and kissed her briefly on the forehead.

"That's it?" She said. "I've come to expect better from you Mr. Bartowski."

Chuck waggled his eyebrows at her. "I'm on a timetable here, Mrs. Bartowski. But I promise I'll make it up to you later."

She leaned into him, breathing in the scent of his neck before putting a kiss on his collarbone. "You'd better."

"I love you." Sarah rolled her eyes and pushed him gently toward the door.

"Don't let Morgan feed my daughter any grape soda."

"A second ago she was my daughter." Chuck said over his shoulder. Sarah pinched his butt and shoved him toward the door more forcefully. "Are you trying to get rid of me?"

"Yes. Time for girl talk with Ellie. Devon's on call in the morning, so it's just the two of us. That and I'm going to actually drink wine again for the first time in a year."

"I thought you were breastfeeding exclusively."

"I'm not going to get _drunk_. I'm just going to have a glass or two. The alcohol will be out of my system by the time you get home. Go talk to the bearded gnome."

***

The drive to the Buymore from Echo Park was familiar, but seemed oddly unreal, like it was a part of his life that was always present but he just never thought about it, or never saw the connecting streets, the freeway on ramps and interchanges that he took day after dreary day. When he pulled into the mostly empty parking lot, Chuck was struck by an odd sense of nostalgia. This wasn't his life anymore, but part of him missed it, and not just going on missions with Sarah and Casey. God help him, he actually missed dealing with Jeff and Lester's insanity. And there they were, heading over to Bennigan's to get wasted. Nothing ever changed. Well, he amended, glancing at the car seat in the back and its precious cargo and smiling.

He sat in the parking lot, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and staring at the front of the Buymore. He felt exposed, jumpy, but he had done two sweeps as he came in, and found nothing suspicious. Chuck put the rental car in gear and pulled around out front of the store, and there he was. The beard was a little longer, though neatly trimmed, and the hair was a little—weird to say—more professional, but it was still the same Morgan Grimes. Chuck lowered the passenger window.

"Morg. Get in."

"Chuck?" Morgan breathed, peering in. "It is you! What the hell man?"

"Get in the car, we need to talk."

Morgan shrugged and yanked the door open. "Yeah, yeah of course. Just let me just throw my stuff in the back and—"

Chuck grabbed Morgan's wrist. "No throwing anything in the back. Sarah'd kill me if anything happened to Lisa. Also, I'd probably do something permanently drastic to you if you clocked my daughter in the head with your bag."

"Daughter?" Morgan said as he sat down, swiveling to look in the back seat. "My god. What did you do...? What did you do! You knocked up Sarah!"

Chuck brandished his wedding ring. "No, not technically."

"Is that— I can't... d'you... My heart. I think I'm having a heart attack."

"I'm glad you're taking it this well." Chuck grumbled. "Bodes real well for the rest of the conversation."

"Rest of the conversation!" Morgan said. "Like why you frakking disappeared for a year?"

He sighed. "Exactly like that. Look, Morgan." Chuck started. "I understan—"

"No you look." Morgan shouted. "I don't know what could have been so important that you couldn't take ten minutes out of your busy schedule of disappearing god knows where, getting married and starting a family to tell your _best _friend what was going on!"

Lisa screamed and flailed her arms and legs. "Nice work Morgan." Chuck growled, pulling over. He unbuckled and turned around and scooped Lisa out of her car seat. "It's okay baby girl. Uncle Morgan's just being a jerk. You'll get used to it." He glared at his friend. "Keep your voice down." Morgan nodded and cringed inwardly.

"Sorry, Chuck. I just... what the hell, man?"

"I know." Chuck said. "I can't tell you everything, Sarah would... well, she wouldn't kill me. She's kind of attached to me, but still." Chuck blew out a sigh, his jiggling of Lisa finally quieting her. "Okay. Here goes. Sarah's CIA."

"CIA!" Morgan said in a harsh whisper. "No way."

"She was the CIA liason for an interagency counter-terrorism task force, based here in Burbank, but a rogue intelligence operative put out a hit on her. That's why we had to run, to keep everybody else out of the line of fire." All of that was technically true, just not the whole story, and maybe a smidge out of sequence.

Morgan took that part in stride. "How long have you known she was CIA?"

This was the hard part, but he'd lied to Morgan so much in the last few years, that this version of the last three years barely seemed like a lie at all. "Pretty much the whole time. Some goons tried to kill her on our first date, and it all kind of came out."

"What about—" Morgan paused. "Hang on, why was she working at the Weinerlicious and the Orange Orange."

"Actually, she felt guilty for putting me in danger so she wanted to stay close." Chuck said. "And good thing she did. Terrorists and mobsters seem to be drawn to the Buymore like flies to honey." "So, wait." Morgan said. "That's why things were always 'complicated' with Sarah?"

"Yeah, we weren't really dating at first, she just felt this duty to protect me because she'd made me a target in the first place. Then look, you know how Sarah and I were kind of on the outs before we left?"

"Yeah. Dude, that was painful to watch."

"Well, that was Sarah trying to push me away because she knew this guy was out there looking for her. Most of our breakups were like that, one of us trying to protect the other from something."

"And not because of the Sandwich girl?" Morgan said, dubious. "I said it once before. Mindcheater!" He even poked his fingers at him like he had three years ago.

"Okay, actually the sandwich girl is a bad example." Chuck shrugged. "Sarah was falling for the Bartowski charm by then, but she just didn't want to tell me, and I didn't want to keep lying to myself that she wanted me. We kind of got our signals crossed on that one. Don't mention that to Sarah. Or Jill! Don't ever mention Jill! It's kind of a touchy subject. She doesn't carry a gun anymore, but she's still got throwing knives and I've seen her kill a man from thirty feet with those things."

"What? Kill!" Morgan said. "You're not serious?"

"There were a lot of bad people chasing her—us. And now there aren't. That's why we can come back like this. It's not difficult to do the math on that one, is it?"

"And you're okay with that? You're not freaking out?" Morgan stammered. "She's killed people."

"Not good people" Chuck said. "Bad people, very bad people. And I had time to adjust to the idea. Years, in point of fact. Give it a couple months before you start worrying about the freakout going on too long."

"I was never very good at being patient." Morgan took a steadying breath. "How many people has she killed?"

"Morg, just leave it alone. I don't want to think about it right now."

"How many people have _you_ killed?" Morgan said, with a kind of sickly grin on his face, like he was hoping for one answer but expecting another.

"Too many." Chuck said slowly, trying to be honest."Less than Sarah."

"Dude."

"Look, that's not what I wanted to talk to you about." Chuck shrugged. "This whole thing has really changed us both. I helped Sarah figure out who was chasing us, and so she pulled some strings and got me a job as an analyst."

"Whoa, whoa." Morgan said. "You're going to work for the CIA? Can you tell me that?"

"Yes. We're moving to Langley, Virginia, in a couple weeks."

"You're going to be a spy?"

"What, no. Nooo. I'm... it's an entry level position Morgan, I'm barely going to be making more than I did at the Buymore. I don't even get top secret clearance. Decent health care though, full dental. We're going to need it. Sarah's not fully vested in her pension."

"Pension? She quit?"

"Early retirement. Her choice." He bounced Lisa on his lap a little and she giggled. "Sarah took one look at this one and said. 'I would like more of those please.'" Chuck shrugged. "Kind of hard to have kids when you're off fighting terrorists in Jakarta all the time."

"Yeah, I can see that." Morgan said slowly. "But, I can come visit you guys right?"

"I'll have to check. We're going to be unlisted, so... I just— I don't know. I'm going to have to get new screen names and everything, but I'll get you my new Gamertag. I promise."

"Cool." Morgan sat back, glancing around the interior of Chuck's rental car. "So what happened to the Porsche?"

"You're kidding right?" Chuck said. "We had to ditch that first thing. I think it's in a CIA impound lot somewhere."

"Well, at least you finally locked down Sarah." Morgan said.

"Locked down?" Chuck asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Dude, no offense. But she was always way too hot for you. Now, as long as you don't do something crazy like try to do her up the butt, you're set for life man."

Chuck coughed and blushed furiously and clapped his hands over Lisa's ears. "Morgan, I really don't think that kind of talk is appropriate in front of my daughter."

"What? Oh, right, right." Morgan said, but then he glanced at the expression on Chuck's face. "Hang on. I know that look. That's the I'm super guilty about something look and why would you be super guilty about _anything_ now that you've come clean to your best friend abo— Oh. My. God."

"Morgan, that's not what I'm—" Damn it, he couldn't explain that he was still feeling guilty about lying to his friend, and not... other things. Probably better not to correct him and have to come up with some alternate plausible explanation, but if Sarah got wind he was letting Morgan think _that, _she would— well, Chuck didn't know exactly what she would do, but it would definitely be unpleasant and it would probably involve knives in some way. Okay, but Morgan was smart enough not to bring up something like that with Sarah. Right? Chuck glanced at his friend, thoughts blazing by at warp speed. He weighed the risks. "Shut up. New topic."

"No. Freaking. Way. So Sarah's a bit of a freak, huh?" Morgan continued in an unexpected British accent. "Oi always suspected." Chuck supposed it was his try at James Bond.

"Morgan." Chuck demanded. "New. Topic. Now."

"So... Yeah. Uh. You ever get to finish Mass Effect 2?"

Chuck let out a sigh of relief. "Yes. Yes I did."

"Cool."

***

They went back to Morgan's apartment without further incident. Sarah peeked out of Ellie and Devon's window and waved at him. Chuck frowned, confused at how she'd known he was there, and Sarah tapped her watch and waved her iPhone. He rolled his eyes and followed Morgan over to Casa Grimes. "So are you and Sarah staying here tonight or what?"

Chuck arched an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"You and the—god its weird to say it— the wife. You and the wife and baby Bartowski can shack up in your old room, it's just the way you left it, dude." Morgan explained.

"Wait, seriously?" Chuck said. "I can't-- why didn't you get a new roommate. How could you afford to keep the place without somebody else to help with the rent?"

Morgan smiled and tossed Chuck his nametag. _Morgan Grimes: Manager._ It proclaimed. "Big Mike moved up to a job at corporate, and bequeathed the store to me. I've got this place covered."

"I was only gone a year, right?" Chuck breathed. "How did I wake up in the twilight zone? You're in charge of the Buymore?"

Morgan shrugged. "Well its not like Big Mike was ever really the hands-on manager guy. I just get paid more to do nothing like always, and my Assistant Manager does the real work. I don't know what I was always so worried about."

"Crazy." Chuck said, still staring down at the proof of Morgan's adulthood. "But I think Ellie and Awesome want us to stay in their guest room." He shrugged. "I'll have to ask Sarah."

Morgan laughed. "Whipped."

"Yeah, well can you blame me?" Chuck thought a moment. "But I _am_ going to have to take the Tron poster with me when we go, no matter what Sarah says."

"That's the Chuck Bartowski I know. Don't let her change you."

***

Morgan put in Call of Duty. "Man, how long has it been since we wrecked some fools at Call of Duty, Chuckmeister?"

"I don't know." Chuck said, then grinned. "Few weeks? Would have been right before Lisa was born."

Morgan stared at him like he'd grown antlers. "What are you talking about?"

Chuck just grinned wider and grabbed a controller. "Hang on, let me retrieve my new gamertag. Didn't I mention? Sarah got put on bed rest the last couple months of her pregnancy, and she may have gotten hooked. She's already on her third prestige."

"Hang on, I recognize that name." Morgan breathed. "You're that jerk who kept sniping me from across the damn map?"

Chuck barked a laugh. "Actually that was Sarah. She gets a little mean when she's in the zone, and you did blow her up that one time when she was about to hit her killstreak." Chuck said.

"Dude." Morgan said. "I've said it before, but you are without a doubt the luckiest man alive. Not only did you bag a mega hottie CIA superspy, she's a gamer? Lucky! Why couldn't I have been in the nerd herd desk that day? I knew how to fix that cell phone too."

"You know..." Chuck cut himself off. Morgan didn't need to know Sarah had been picking him up as part of her job. He still wasn't sure how to feel about their first meeting himself. "Yeah, I'm sure it was just the Nerd Herd uniform working its ineffable magic. Explains Jeff's luck with women. Oh wait, no it doesn't. Let it go and lets smoke some fools, Bartowski/Grimes style."

They played Call of Duty for an hour or two, and it felt almost like old times, except they couldn't blast the volume like they used to for fear of waking the baby, and right when they were getting their teamwork back in the swing of things, Chuck's watch started beeping.

"Dude what's that?"

"Baby alarm." Chuck explained. "I now have five minutes to get Lisa back to Sarah for her feeding, or I will have one highly cranky Bartowski baby on my case, which will, as always lead to one _homicidally_ cranky Bartowski super spy on my case. I'll be right back."

"Okay, but you totally gotta stop by the store tomorrow and prove to everybody you're not a figment of my imagination."

"Done. But no CIA talk in front of the crazies."

"Come on." Morgan scoffed. "I'm like the chamber of secrets up in here."

"Okay." Chuck said doubtfully.

"Hey, Chuck wait!" Morgan said. Chuck turned in the doorway. "What do I tell everyone? I assume I'm not supposed to talk about Sarah being CIA, or you? Where do I say you went this whole time?"

Chuck grunted. "Sorry. I forgot. You tell them I have a new government job I can't talk about, which is true. The rest though, keep the lies simple. Sarah's dad got sick, I ran after her, one thing led to another, and then wham. Wedding, baby... the whole deal. I couldn't call because my phone broke before I left, and after that... well. I was distracted. Newlyweds, right?"

"Yeah. I'll bet. She's a freak isn't she? C'mon bro, details. You can trust me."

"Let it go, Morg. And you are never _ever_ getting details if I want to keep my skin whole and without stab-marks." Chuck said, and strolled across the courtyard to Ellie and Devon's apartment with Lisa cradled carefully in his arms. Sarah had ears like a cat, and if Morgan was going to keep up that line of questioning Chuck was going to have to put a very large buffer between the two of them. Leaving for DC was seeming like a better idea by the minute. Three thousand miles might seem excessive to some people, but Chuck had learned recently to take nothing for granted.

END

A/N 2: The end of this particular adventure, but not the end of this AU.

I'm working on both a prequel and a sequel at present. I will probably start posting the prequel, Chuck & Sarah Vs. Themselves before too much longer, but time between updates will be longer while I try to get my thesis ready for my defense. The sequel is in much more fragmented form and currently lacks a title or, you know, plot and stuff, so: don't hold your breath.

Thanks for all the reviews, especially those of you who had constructive criticisms and concerns, like _Just Chuck_. I live off people telling me where I messed up in my writing like most people live off water. (Or chili-dogs in this country, but who am I to judge, right? Mmm. Chili-dogs.) /End random tangent.

Somehow this story got up past 50,000 words in a hurry.

Chuck & Sarah Vs. The bunker has to this point, garnered almost 13000 hits, more than 5000 visitors, and 94 reviews. Which is, not to put too fine a point on it, awesome.

ninjaVanish—

Signing off.


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